


Keeping It Loki

by AtlinMerrick



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Banter, Domestic, Dream Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, Storytelling, Wet Dream, sexy talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:21:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1746164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/pseuds/AtlinMerrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look, it was a dream god damn it. It was just a sexy, toe-curling, kinky, cock-hardening, *wet* dream. Yet it didn't matter how many times John told Sherlock that, Sherlock got all red-faced and stalked out of the sitting room, and then stalked back with his mouth open but stalked off again without actually saying anything.</p><p>Yes, well John Watson knew precisely what to do about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackMorgan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackMorgan/gifts), [verityburns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verityburns/gifts).



Look, it was a dream god damn it. It was just a sexy, toe-curling, kinky, cock-hardening, wet _dream._

Yet it didn't matter how many times John told Sherlock that, Sherlock got all red-faced and silent and stalked out of the sitting room, and then stalked back with his mouth open but stalked off again without actually _saying_ anything, and to make things worse he hadn't laid one finger on that hard thing he was carting around between his legs and wouldn't let _John_ touch it either and frankly this had to stop before someone came to harm, either from blood loss to the brain or getting tackled to the carpet or both.

"Sherlock this has got to stop before someone comes to harm. It was a _dream._ Everyone has them. All the time. They can no more be prevented than one can survive without breathing."

Oh god. Fine. Right. Good. _That_ was a stupid analogy and John knew better.

Because Sherlock? He admitted once that as a child he'd experimented to see how long he could survive without breathing. Because, you know, it was _dull._ To breathe.

(Mycroft enjoys telling the tale of how little brother got so woozy from mild carbon dioxide poisoning that he spoke in pig Latin for two entire minutes—a 'language' he claimed then and insists now he doesn't know.)

Anyway, it was nearly thirty years on and about some things Sherlock is still childish. He still gripes about breathing, and when he dreams about humping men other than John? Well that just sends a certain consulting sweetheart right on round the guilty, grousing bend.

_Silently._

"I won't stop asking you know." John said it softly, though he knew Sherlock heard. He also knew that Sherlock knew that Sherlock had no chance of keeping the dream to himself. As with breathing, there are some things a consulting detective must do, whether he wished to or not. The short list included eating, sleeping, breathing, and not resisting John Watson-Holmes.

That didn't mean he wouldn't _try._

Sherlock stalked over to where John was sitting on the sofa. He opened his pretty mouth, the interior of which John could see was absolutely _stuffed_ with invective. Alas, none of it passed tongue or teeth, instead Sherlock spun round on bare heels again and this time stomped off into the kitchen.

Look, John knows that the best way to manage a tantrum is to ignore it. However, he's as likely to ignore Sherlock as he is to remember the chemical formula for ytterbium(III) chloride hexahydrate ("That's not real." "I assure you John, it is." "Ytterbium? It sounds like something Flash Gordon needs for his rocket ship." "Flash what?" "Never mind.") It's one reason why they work so well. Sherlock wants attention, John wants to attend.

So John slouched lower on the sofa and raised his paper. In order to pay attention to Sherlock, protocol demanded he give a few signs of paying no attention whatsoever.

Seconds later a dish clattered noisily in the kitchen. Seconds after _that_ came another clatter. Then a third and fourth. From the sound of it, Sherlock was simply picking things up and putting them down again. Hard.

Also protocol.

John rattled his paper noisily, as custom required. _I hear you,_ that rattling said to the kitchen clatter. _And I'm going to pretend to ignore you because I've got important John shit to do and am in no mood to cater to you._

*Clatter* Clattered the man in the kitchen. _Fine. I don't want your attention anyway._

*Rattle* _Good, because you're not getting it._

*Clatter* _Fine, fine,_ fine. _Because I really, really don't_ want _it._

*Rattle* _Oh for god's sake!_

John folded his paper as noisily as he'd unfolded it. Then he unfolded it so he could refold it _louder._ Then he stood up and clamorously straightened his shoulders (it can be done) and then John went into the kitchen.

He looked at Sherlock. As expected the silly git was standing at the counter, his hands clenched round a dirty cup and saucer. John nodded approvingly. Last time he'd clattered with wedding-gift wine glasses and had chipped the rim of one. They'd had a row.

"Sherlock."

The man so named stared at the cracked handle on an eye-height cupboard (Sherlock may or may not have slammed this self-same cupboard door open during a previous *clatter*). He pretended to be deaf.

Proforma.

John thought about what next to say. He paged through a sheaf of possibilities and then selected the one that seemed to fit the rainy day, the cold flat, and come to think of it, his own achy joints.

"I don't feel well," John Watson-Holmes said to Sherlock Holmes-Watson. "I'm going back to bed. Maybe you…if you wanted…to keep me company…" John stutter-sighed pitifully. "Unless you're busy. It's fine."

John tugged his ratty dressing gown closed and breathed in the general vicinity of Sherlock's peripheral vision. Sherlock's got remarkable peripheral vision. He can see a heavy sigh with it. He can probably detect a slight fever with it, too. He most certainly can discern the absence of a one hundred seventy centimetre man.

Sherlock counted to forty-two, then followed his husband into the bedroom.

* * *

"It's your fault you know."

John tugged the duvet to his chin and looked up at his looming love. The more he thought about it, the worse John felt. He did have a fever, he was sure of it. He waited to learn about his transgression.

Sherlock pinched up a corner of the duvet. Underneath it John was naked. Good.

Sherlock stripped off everything but his own dressing gown. He slid under the duvet, propped his back against the bed head, and looked down at his husband.

"You made such a, a, a…a _big deal_ about that _DVD."_

It took John a moment to figure out what Sherlock was referring to. And then all came clear.

" _Avengers?"_ (John had mentioned to Mr. Chatterjee in passing that he was going to pick up the long-desired DVD, having missed the actual movie.)

"And then you ran off to buy it like, like, like some sort of frenetic tweener _thing."_

"Right." (John had picked it up on a trip to Sainsbury's later that week.)

"And _then_ you got all giggly and turned out the lights and made popcorn and told me to go away so you could watch the movie in peace."

"Uh, yeah." (That's pretty much exactly what John did).

So with all of that provocation, of _course_ Sherlock had had to watch the idiotic thing just to know what idiotic thing John was so very, very _enamoured_ with.

And the idiotic thing was i.d.i.o.t.i.c.

Norse gods who used entirely too much product in their hair; a smart alecky, eye patch-wearing guy no one seemed to obey ("I'll explain later, Sherlock, just _shut it for now.");_ unbearably self-righteous _everyone;_ and that one with the horns and the hair, the pale skin and the cheekbones and he wasn't even supposed to be a hero John said, but at least he made some sort of _sense,_ and had a flowy coat and some _fun_ and never mind, _never mind._

John wriggled closer to his husband and whispered in delight, "Sherlock Holmes-Watson, did you dream about having sex with a—" wheezy giggle "—big-horned Norse god?"

(Because yes, John knows precisely which character Sherlock's subconscious would fixate on because John knows that Sherlock's subconscious would only choose someone as strong-willed, domineering, and fucking fantastic-looking as himself to, you know, transgress with.)

Instead of answering, Sherlock looked around his immediate vicinity for something to clatter. The only thing close to hand was a box of tissues on the nightstand, so he picked that box up and he slammed that box onto his lap and he made a big huffing sound and glared at the wall.

"I keep telling you it's okay. I know you know it's okay. You can look at other men. You can _dream_ about other men."

Sherlock tugged a tissue out of the box and crumpled it into a ball. This felt fairly good but it didn't actually _clatter._ Maybe if he tried harder.

He tried harder.

"It's what people do."

Sherlock tugged out another tissue, crumpled it _harderer,_ opened his mouth—

 _"Even_ consulting geniuses."

Sherlock closed his mouth, yanked out another tissue and squished it so densely it may have collapsed in on itself—a little, paper product black hole.

"Probably especially consulting geniuses."

Sherlock loves surprises. He relishes not knowing what a criminal's going to do next, what John'll say, where a case will lead them. But Sherlock Holmes does not like surprises from his own body. He wants complete control of all six feet of consulting self, so when he instinctively glances at a pretty man or, or, _or_ god forbid, dreams about one so vividly he comes twice (at _least),_ well it makes him cranky, almost silent, and—

Sherlock mashed the tissue box down again, which did nothing to relieve the turgid thing he was still carting between those pretty thighs, so he yanked out a fifth tissue, then a sixth and he'd have likely gone through the entire box in this manner, yanking, and balling, balling and yanking, but finally John placed a hand on Sherlock's wrist. Sherlock's wrist could tell that John's hand was warmer than usual.

Sherlock frowned down at his husband. John really was a bit sick.

John Watson-Holmes picked up a few tissue balls and dabbed lightly at his slightly glistening nose. He curled tight against Sherlock's hip, blinked up at him, and said sweetly, "Tell me a story."

Sherlock frowned down at John. Idly he wondered if he'd ever actually _want_ to resist the man. He was pretty sure he knew the answer.

Fine. _Fine._ Sherlock would tell John his dream if John wanted to know so badly. He'd give him every little sordid detail and then maybe, just maybe, he'd never have another dream like this one ever again in all of _ever._ Because if this was the sort of dream other people regularly had…

Sherlock mashed the tissue box down some more, took a deep breath and said, "He asked me how hard I wanted it."

Suddenly nervous, Sherlock fell silent. He waited for outrage or petulance or at the very least big harumph noises. What he got for a long and golden moment was silence.

And then John Watson-Holmes began giggling like a helium-addled loon. "Hard as in how _hard?"_

Sherlock frowned down at his husband.

"As in _penis_ hard? That sort of hard?" John wheezed. "I mean, I didn't expect it to just, you know, _start._ I thought there'd be foreplay. Maybe some banter. At least a bit of wine."

Sherlock frowned harder. John looked off into the distance. "My sexy dreams never go that way. They take _forever._ I nearly grow grey just waiting to—"

John cut himself off when he realised Sherlock was no longer looking at him. Sherlock was looking west. Far west. Very far west. Probably all the way to West Acton west.

John slowly tugged Sherlock's dressing gown aside a bit. He murmured against the now-exposed skin there, his warm lips warm, his feverish cheek feverish, and he said, "I'm sorry. Maybe you should just explain. I'll be quiet. Can I have a tissue?"

Sherlock looked at John in peripheral vision.

John blinked rheumy eyes up at Sherlock. He shudder-sighed. Dabbed delicately when a tight little tissue ball was slowly passed to him. "Thank you," he whispered against succulent husbandly flesh.

Sherlock stopped looking at John peripherally. He looked at him full on. John glistened back at him. Sherlock blinked his contrition. And then Sherlock continued.

"We were at a restaurant. It was dark and moody. The table was low. He wore green leather and golden horns. And he wanted to seduce me."

_First I want to get this up front: My Loki's still a petulant, powerful, spoiled Norse immortal, but he's not a mass murderer—I'll cover how that's so in a later chapter. Second: Verity Burns is the reason this story exists. She took me to see "Avengers," and told me I needed to write a Sherlock/Loki fic. I told her ha ha ha like fun, then she said 'visible panty lines,' 'pants party,' and 'pterodactyl' and an okay-if-it'll-make-you-happy single-chapter fic turned into...this._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thirty-six percent. The good detective's heart rate was up by thirty-six percent. He could feel it pounding in his throat. He could also stop this, here, now. He could turn around and leave the restaurant and wake up at 221B.
> 
> But that's not what Sherlock did.
> 
> No, instead…Sherlock touched Loki.

"Shall I ask again? Is that what you need my pretty darling? A bit of wooing? Because I'll ask all night if that's what your human heart desires. I'll ask on my knees. I'll put you on _yours._ How…hard…do…you… _want_ it?"

In reply to the immortal sitting across from him in restaurant gloom, Sherlock Holmes, legendary consulting detective, John Watson's husband, and professional pain in the arse, rolled his eyes.

In response to _that,_ Loki of Asgard, emo Norse god, he who was burdened with glorious purpose, and a man who looked _fantastic_ in green leather, waited. While he waited, he dipped a long finger in his wine and then sucked.

Sherlock halted his dramatic eye-rolling mid-roll to watch.

"Did you hear me?"

For a moment Sherlock couldn't hear a thing over the sound of his own lip-biting. He hoisted his wine glass and got the entire contents down in two swallows.

Loki petulantly made a moue at being unanswered because this god, like every deity fashioned by mortals, was more childish, vain, and needy than the creatures over whom he attempted to reign.

Except one.

Sherlock out-moued Loki's moue. "Being as you're sat less than a metre from me, across a cocktail table the size of a serviette, I believe it's safe to assume I heard."

Sherlock tried not noticing the slow way Loki opened his mouth to reply but Sherlock not noticing something less than three feet from him was as likely as either of these men shutting up. In defense the good detective yanked up his wine glass. Only after it clattered against his teeth did he remember it was empty.

Loki grinned and Sherlock tried to not look at the blasted thing. It was a ridiculously fantastic grin. When they say _lit up his whole face,_ that grin, right there, was what they meant.

"What do you see that you're trying so hard not to see, Sherlock?"

For approximately two seconds Sherlock pretended he wasn't going to answer that, but nothing quite entices a vain man to talk like another vain man giving him the floor.

So fine, all right, if the annoying creature across from him wanted to ask _pointless_ questions about _obvious_ things, then Sherlock would go right ahead and _respond_ to them. _Pointedly._

"What do I see? What do I _see?_ I see a textbook example of over-compensation. Between the garish coat, the tight trousers, the big stick that ejaculates—excuse me, fires bolts of energy—and that flagrant sweep of hair, you're practically the definition of attention-seeking."

This god, like every deity fashioned by mortals, knew when he'd met his match. Loki of Asgard grinned, then gestured with a dip of his chin. "You forgot these darling."

Sherlock huffed, annoyed. He'd totally forgotten 'these' because he completely loved 'these.'

"Or did you not see the large, _erect_ horns on my head?"

This was precisely the spot for another defensive eye-roll and Sherlock did not disappoint.

As he did when presented with all the other eye rolling, the moues of discontent, the huffs of impatience, Loki responded with that fantastic, toothy grin, the one that annoyed the hell out of Sherlock's head, but did wonders for Sherlock's cock.

"Since we're taking inventory darling…" Loki ran tongue tip over his lips slowly, let his gaze roam as languidly over Sherlock's head. "Look at that extravagance of curls. You wear them like a crown, my prince, or a halo."

Sherlock turned, looked into the distance, haughty as any prince. Or angel.

"And that shirt, my but look at the sumptuous linen. So few males of your species and class wear their garments so wonderfully bright, so fantastically _tight._ I do like this green one, the purple and the blue, too. Surely it's not an accident your _plumage_ matches that of a peacock?"

Sherlock frowned into the distance, to completely show Loki that he did not approve of this analogy. A distant diner, detecting that gaze upon him and misinterpreting, took care to clatter less with his flatware.

"And if we're discussing plumage we can't leave out that wonderful coat, can we? You swirl it, swan in it, you wear it like wings."

Loki watched Sherlock watch nothing, he watched and he waited and he patiently waited, and he took so long with the waiting that finally Sherlock flicked his gaze to the god's face. Loki grinned his pleasure.

"Finally Sherlock, I want you to understand something and that thing is this: Right now not one part of your body is closed to me. Not your wide, pretty eyes, not the arms you rest either side of you."

Here Loki lifted his chin and lowered his gaze—*bam*—right between Sherlock's thighs. "And most especially not those lovely legs, open just…enough." Loki sucked in a noisy, _sexy_ breath between clenched teeth. "Oh, such an invitation you send, my pretty peacock, so much _enticement."_

Sherlock knows why people lie, cheat, and steal. He's untangled the machinations of murderers, thieves, and liars and saved the day more times than he can count, but right then the great detective couldn't figure out which would present the louder denial, crossing his legs tight or spreading them wider.

Then Loki did to him what Sherlock does to everyone else, he verbalised the uncomfortably obvious. "Open or closed I'll still know you're erect, my sweet. Because open or closed I can…"

Loki's eyes drifted closed, his mouth open, and he drew a deep breath, seemed to let it play over his tongue like a fine wine. "…oh I can _smell_ you."

Sherlock absolutely, completely, and utterly will deny that he moaned.

* * *

John moaned.

Sherlock cleared his throat once, twice, three times, then at last had the courage to glance down at his husband.

His husband, curled hard against his hip, was busy breathing open-mouthed and it had little to do with developing congestion and more to do with that, that thing, the thing Loki had done, _tasting_ the air, savouring it, letting it play over tongue and teeth until there was that wonderful, wonderful thing: the _flavour_ of this man in his mouth.

"That," whispered John, "oh god that. The scent of you when you want sex Sherlock, oh you have no idea…"

Long before he wanted this— _this_ being a love affair and a life that included wanting and needing and getting, a life that included _making love—_ Sherlock knew that his body wasn't quite like most other bodies, no of course it wasn't.

From the moment he hit puberty, from the time his body went from boy to man and began betraying him with wet dreams and morning erections, well right then it started and it didn't matter whether he was freshly showered or fully dressed, the moment Sherlock was aroused you could smell the _rut_ on him and for years it had done him no favours, none at all and then…and then, oh and very much then there was John.

"It's like a moan, it's like a touch, it's like words without words." John shifted until he was half in Sherlock's lap, nose mashed up against the spot where tissue box pressed against a still-raging hard-on. "The absolutely glorious smell of you."

This, right here, is when it got _good._ All those years ago, long before he knew how to tell John with words _I want you, god I want you so much,_ his body had done it for him, a scented semaphore flag spelling out the carnal obvious: _I'm ready John, I'm so ready._

And dear god he was. Breathing gone heavy and slow, Sherlock was about to lift that much-manhandled tissue box and do for John what he had thought about doing in his dream, Sherlock was about to spread his legs and—

John slid out of Sherlock's lap and back to the bed. Gazing up from his cuddle against his husband's side he said softly, "And then what?"

Sherlock blinked fast, took a minute to regain linear thought, shifted the tissue box around a bit, unsure if he was relieving or inflaming, nodded and, with a great deal of throat-clearing, continued.

* * *

"You smell it too, don't you?"

Loki leaned over the low, tiny table separating them and scented the air in a way that was a thousand miles from understated. "Darker than any wine, more mouth-watering than food that fragrance." The unsubtle god grinned, leaned back in his chair, pretended sudden contrition. "Oh darling, I'm so sorry, I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

Loki's 'darling' quit tugging his suit coat closed and loudly glowered at everything: The whole procession of pet names, the false display of remorse, and the entirely inappropriate focus on the _smell_ of things.

Fighting fire with cranky fire, the detective crossed his legs, leaned over the table and said quite clearly, "Can't get any back home then? Big brother not _sniffing_ around you, _'darling'?"_

Loki dropped chin to chest, presented those horns like a warning, and for an instant his cheeks flushed faintly blue, his eyes glowed like embers…and then they cleared and Loki laughed. "How did I forget?"

Loki met Sherlock halfway across that small table, ran his fingers across a pale forehead, whispering, "How did I forget the brilliant reason I picked you?"

Praise Sherlock's beauty and—unless you're John Watson—you'll be on shaky ground, but compliment that brain and you'll find the good detective sensitive to any flattery.

"Go on."

Loki grinned, seemed to debate exactly how much wooing he was willing to put into bedding this man who was every inch his arrogant equal, but they both knew the answer to that.

As much as it damn well took.

But suddenly Sherlock leaned away, unwilling to give Loki a chance to continue because Sherlock had two things the deity before him didn't: Genius. And John.

That second thing meant something very simple: Sherlock didn't need one single thing this god had to offer. With John Sherlock knew love, acceptance, friendship, and admiration. He was coddled and catered to, challenged and controlled, he was given unto and taken from.

John Watson wanted as well as needed him, and most importantly for here and for now…John loved him. He loved him in the hearts-and-flowers sense yes, but also in the very fine fucking and sucking, licking and moaning sense. John has buggered him until he was sore, kissed him until he was swollen, done and talked about doing, John was his first lover and John will be his last and so Sherlock did not _need_ this god's prick, oh hell no.

Which brought up the other thing Sherlock had that Loki of Asgard did not: Deductive genius.

Sherlock sees things others don't and so Sherlock needs to wants to has to very, very much has to _look._ So at Loki of Asgard Sherlock looked. And because genius craves an audience he told his audience what he saw.

"You didn't let me finish before, so eager to take control, so quick. One hopes you're not that fast _everywhere."_

Loki said nothing so Sherlock was annoying and pedantic and asked politely, "Should I explain what I mean? About ejacu—"

Still Loki said nothing but he turned his head away, feigning boredom. Sherlock grinned.

"As you say, we're a lot alike. But where I know my faults—and they are legion and quite legendary—I think you pretend you have none. But you do and they're the mirror of mine. Shall I tell you what they are? Shall I open those blind immortal eyes?

Loki smiled. It was a small smile, not that high-wattage grin that caused flutters in both women and men.

Sherlock took that as a yes because he knows firsthand that everyone loves to learn how others see them and that this god was perhaps more susceptible than most.

 _"Vain,"_ began the vain man _._ "So very, very vain. That long, carefully styled hair. The close cut of your costume—"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Battle gear."

"—and its complimentary hues specifically chosen to set off pale skin. The gold accents swirling from neck to ankle like pretty jewels, drawing the eye from narrow waist out to broad shoulders. Then boots that tack on several inches to an already long frame."

Because he knew Sherlock would notice, Loki watched Sherlock's mouth as he talked, damn well _eye sexed_ the thing. That didn't stop the good detective from opening and closing it to say a whole lot of annoying things.

 _"Lonely,"_ Sherlock said low. "You're immortal, nearly invincible, with worlds to tame, but instead you sit here in the middle of a 'mewling mob' of 'silly inferiors?' What's that about? And the stick, that ridiculous stick that shouts for attention even as you yourself stamp your feet and clamour for same. Those avid eyes that follow everything, hungry to look, to see, hungry to be _looked at, to be seen."_

Sherlock paused for breath and in the brief silence Loki whispered, _"Bored."_

And now Sherlock hushed, no longer interested in being a dick because oh lord he understood that last one. The desperate need for something to occupy an ever-whirring brain. The endless hope that someone, something, anything _out there_ would challenge the questing, hungry mass _up here._ Stun me, amaze me, confuse me, interest me, make today different from yesterday, give me a reason, _dear god give me purpose._

Looking at Loki that's now all Sherlock saw. An almost-man starving for stimulation, for something to do that was worth doing. "Is that why you do the awful things you do?" Sherlock asked softly.

Loki shook his head, "Oh darling, I've not done even half of what they say. Lies stimulate far more than truths, and somehow they're infinitely sweeter to believe." Loki leaned across the tiny table separating them. "You know how that goes, my beautiful genius. Should I tell you the terrible tales they tell of you?"

So help him Sherlock stayed silent because maybe more than anything he wanted to hear anything Loki had to say.

"Some still believe you commit the brutal crimes you solve, isn't that quaint? Where, I wonder, do they think you get the _time?_ Even a being as supreme as _me_ couldn't do all they say _you've_ done in a day—and still make it home for dinner." Loki laughed, "Though I wouldn't put it past either of us to try."

The grinning god sobered and softly said, "A machine, they say that too. As if saying something cruel, as if they don't use machines every day, depend on them to give pleasure and relieve pain. As machine they ascribe to you dogmatic precision, faultless logic, and a cold, cold heart."

Again Loki leaned across the table, trailed fingers along the back of one of Sherlock's hands.

"But a cold heart couldn't leave such sweet skin so _hot,_ could it? I should ask the good doctor, perhaps he would know."

_Oh hell no._

Sherlock pulled his hand away, leaving Loki's fingers tented on the tabletop. Did this pretty little meddler just bring _John_ into the conversation?

Well to hell with that.

Because you know what? You just know what? Suddenly this pretty git in his fancy 'battle gear' was _annoying_ that's what. And Sherlock was going to do what he always does when people annoy him. He was absolutely, positively going to—

"I think perhaps I've over-stayed my welcome." Loki, temperamental Norse god, man currently dressed in snug-fitting leather, and every long inch Sherlock Holmes' equal, stood up, frowned down. "I am sorry. I'll be on my way."

Then, with a slight inclination of his gold-clad head, Loki began to turn…

…when Sherlock shot to his feet and said, "Yes."

Loki stilled, then Loki blinked. Then once again Loki grinned, that sunny-as-a-bright-day grin.

Sherlock's knee gave out, he made a small sound, and oh dear god he was going to have to confess to John what that smile did to him.

* * *

"I totally get it."

Sherlock blinked down at his husband. John repeated those four words, then added breathlessly, "Please, go on."

Sherlock nodded, handed John a balled up tissue. The good doctor dabbed his runny nose with it. Sherlock nodded again and Sherlock went on.

* * *

Loki loomed, close enough for their toes to nearly touch. "You're going to have to be more specific my darling. 'Yes?'"

Loki was taller than Sherlock. This was the first time they'd stood and Sherlock was absolutely not prepared for how viscerally he responded to the god's height. And his _scent._ He smelled of pomegranates. Sherlock didn't know he even knew what pomegranates smelled like.

"My pretty precious, at a loss for words. All right, there's time for those later." Loki grinned down at Sherlock. "Now it's time to…" Loki leaned closer still, lips to Sherlock's ear, "Oh my but it's time to…touch."

And in that dream, in a restaurant, in a place that had no name, Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, husband of John Watson, and suddenly super-duper-extra-special-detailed dreamer, turned toward those lips, his own mouth open, breath hot and short and—

—Loki took one step back. Sherlock actually made a sound. He couldn't tell you what sort of sound because he's not particularly well-versed in the definitions of words like groan, moan, grunt, or keen, so we'll just say Sherlock made a sound.

Loki took one second, two seconds, three…and then he echoed it, clearly one of mimicry but was it mockery? Sherlock didn't know, and that not knowing started getting him prickly and when he's prickly he starts to get mouthy, and when he's mouthy he gets rude and then Loki took another step back and…bowed to him.

Looking down at that tall man bent low Sherlock made another sound and he couldn't tell you what _this_ one was either.

"Touch," Loki whispered, but even over the clatter of glassware and china, and his own _sounds,_ Sherlock heard that soft voice.

"Touch me Sherlock."

Thirty-six percent. The good detective's heart rate was up by thirty-six percent. He could feel it pounding in his throat. He could also stop this, here, now. He could turn around and leave the restaurant and wake up at 221B and then wake John up with a head-bump or a…a…

Sherlock Holmes reached with a steady hand and he touched the curl of one extravagantly curved gold horn.

And every single thing in the world went away.

_Yes, a dream, it's all a dream, which is Atlin's so very conventional way of getting Loki, he of Asgard, into her John and Sherlock universe. Because, while I successfully resisted being drawn into the Avengers fandom, I couldn't resist Loki's smile, his emo, his eyes. Curse you Tom Hiddleston, curse your grinning, tousle-haired, happy self._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How long can a god and a mortal dance around one another?
> 
> Apparently as long as it takes. (And maybe even a little bit longer than that.)

"If you tell me that's it I'll die."

Sherlock blinked at the bedroom wall. He was busy watching dim restaurant light glint on gold, watching his own long fingers wrapping around hard, curved—

"I'm serious Sherlock, that better not be the whole dream."

Sherlock blinked again, shook his head, looked down, grunted. "Hu?"

"You can damn well make shit up at this point for all I care, but there had best be more of this dream."

Sherlock tilted his head, grunted again at the snuffly, fevery, curl of his husband. "What?"

"More. Is there more? Did you? You and Loki. _Do you?"_

Sherlock cleared his throat with a delicate cough. He even pressed the back of his fist to his lips in the time-honoured gesture. He then lifted the tissue box from his lap. By, you know, way of reminder.

They both looked down at the succulent swell of Sherlock's still erect, politely dripping cock. "This," Sherlock whispered, almost-shy, "is not the first one."

John sighed in relief, coughed, swiped at his red nose, and murmured, "Fine. Good. Thank god." John nestled tighter against Sherlock's hip and giggled. "Kind of literally."

Sherlock tilted his head and looked down at his husband. His husband snuffled up at him, then smiled toothily. Because sometimes John reads minds. Well, not minds. Mind. Sherlock's.

"I don' know. Because id's sexy. Because you're sexy. Because sometimes someone else wanting who you want makes you want him more. Does it really matter _why_ I find your dream erotic?" John put the full stop on this statement-question by sneezing erotically all over Sherlock's bare hip.

Despite legend to the contrary, Sherlock Holmes is not relentlessly curious. The good detective is only intrigued by puzzles to which an answer will provide revelation. But John, pale everywhere but for his blazing red nose, sticky with his own feverish perspiration, intermittently losing the use of his Ts…well frankly Sherlock didn't care why all of this just made John entirely more beautiful.

Sherlock dabbed at his husband's nose with a tightly-balled tissue. "I love you."

John blew wetly, then reseated the tissue box on Sherlock's penis when it slid askew. "Love you doo."

Everyone politely paused to respect the moist solemnity of the moment, then John patted Sherlock's pretty thigh and said, "So. What happened next?"

* * *

"Yes?"

In the dream Sherlock opened his eyes. At his feet was lush, green carpet. Behind him the crackling warmth of a fire. At his left, a shelved wall of books, decorative flashes of silk or silver catching fire light. To his near right floor-to-ceiling windows dark with night and the liquid flow of the Thames. Across the high-tide river Sherlock could see the beautiful lights of his city.

He recognised the angle of his view, of course he did. The Shard; they were near the very top of that 72-story building. In Loki's flat. Because Loki had a…flat. In London's tallest, pointiest, most dramatic building. That just figured.

"That figures," Sherlock murmured.

Behind him, a soft laugh. "Wouldn't you?"

Sherlock was maybe about to say something smart arse-y when he felt Loki behind him, the faintest of touches at shoulders and lower back, the places where a body presses against a body when bodies first touch.

"You said yes my dear." Whispered words in Sherlock's suddenly goosefleshed ear. "But to what?"

Quick, quick, quick Sherlock took in everything that mattered: The arousing warmth of the fire, the throat-drying nearness of the god, his own reedy pulse, and Sherlock decided that now would be a good time to pretend he was deaf. It always worked with John ("No it doesn't; not even once.") so he figured he might as well stick with a goer.

In response to Sherlock's lack of response Loki did nothing at all.

No, that's not true, Loki did do something. But just a little something. Hardly anything at all.

He began to breathe with Sherlock.

Chest against back, belly to the low curve of spine at the inhale…warm, _shaky_ breath against the back of his neck on the exhale.

After about a hundred years—or long enough for Sherlock to realise he was so hard his ears itched—the good detective realised another thing: This silly, sensual stalemate could go on forever. Literally in Loki's case because he was immortal.

Sherlock was wondering how to tiptoe toward a little unstalemating without seeming to actually _initiate_ anything when Loki leaned in, murmured, "Your warm, human body is so close it's touching mine Sherlock so I know you hear me." A hot tongue licked up along the curl of Sherlock's ear.

The tidal roar of his blood rendered Sherlock actually partially deaf for a long, light-headed moment. And then, just as he was about to say that he had completely forgotten what the question was, Loki plowed on. Consulting detective-like.

"But unlike you, I don't mind repeating myself, starting over. So just in case that great…" Loki thrust lightly against Sherlock. "…big…" By some concatenation of fate Sherlock's hand was at about the height of the god's groin. "…mmm…brain…" Loki moaned a little. "…forgot." Another slow swipe of a Norse tongue along a mortal ear. "I'll ask you again what I asked you so very long ago. How _hard_ do you want it, sweet Sherlock?"

It didn't take a consulting genius to notice that Loki was bolder now, _pushier._ As if here, with just the two of them, he thought he had the advantage.

Ha! As soon as Sherlock gathered his traitorous wits he was totally going to disabuse this domineering deity of his—

"Oh Sherlock, how hard do you want me to make you… _make me?"_

"Fffhhhht."

Behind him Loki shifted, and so, of course, did his shadow. Sherlock stared at the black thing and fffhhhht'ed heavy at it.

Because here's the thing. When you're a genius, and when you're a genius married to John Watson, you do not tarry with boxes, sexual or otherwise. You do not give constraint the time of day, the day of the week, or the month of the damned year. No, what you do is what together the two of you have always done: Say to hell with anything which fences, confines, _defines._ If you are John Watson and Sherlock Holmes you are top and bottom and each thing in between. You are weak and strong. With one another you take and give, you hurt and you heal, and through your lives you'll do all of these things and so very much more because to be one thing, just one thing, well for heaven's sake _why?_

So when a god whispers in your ear that he understands exactly this, when with bossy submission he begs you to beg him…well then even consulting geniuses are given pause.

And wonder of wonders, Loki of Asgard, not quite the smartest bear in this particular room but certainly its most persistent, finally settled back to bide his quiet, heavy-breathing time.

For a long time nothing much happened. Breathing. Lots of that. Pounding. Even more of that, in both chest and between legs. Then, eventually, Sherlock shook his head, inside which a great intellect was busy picking up sofa cushions and opening wardrobe doors, looking for superlatives, ones that would say something like, "Harder than a really hard thing, more strenuous than a thing that's strenuous, also lots and lots." In lieu of all this Sherlock finally just sort of grunted.

Loki pressed his nose into Sherlock's hair, whispered so that his breath tickled skin. "My dashing darling," he said so softly that Sherlock had to lean into him to hear. "I need your words, your lovely words. I know you have so many."

Sherlock will always try a thing at least twice before giving something else a whirl, so he grunted again, only this time a bit more energetically.

In reply Loki insinuated himself in front of Sherlock, like a very pretty ooze. And at last Sherlock Holmes found a word.

"Hnnnn."

Because Loki was naked of bolt-ejaculating staff, calf-high boots, everything but a body-skimming tunic and those gold horns.

Somehow he seemed more bare than if he was bare and Sherlock reflexively looked down, down, down…at Loki's toes, to see how long they were, and if they were pretty.

Sherlock's toes are very long, very pretty, and very talented. Or so he's been told by the only man who has ever known those long and talented things in the biblical sense.

And now Sherlock can tell you that Loki, he of Asgard, bad arse god in kick-arse costuming, has absolutely perfectly-proportioned feet, with sensible toes, and that the entire foot-toe gestalt is stunning. And that suddenly Sherlock wanted to _suck on one of those godly things._

Wait. What?

Sherlock's a sucker, certainly. He will happily do dramatically suck-worthy things to John's cock. He will do those things all day, through the afternoon, and into the evening if so requested. He will dally long over fingers and nipples and neck, with his mouth he's left marks upon John's bum, his belly, his earlobes. If John requires sucking of any sort whatsoever Sherlock will always find in himself the breathless urge to suck. However…

…Sherlock has never been a man with a desperate need to suck on toes. No outright judgment is implied, he simply has never looked at John's toes (or his own for that matter) and thought, _I think that little one there might offer some oral gratification._

However.

Sherlock was now looking at pale Asgardian toes. They were pretty, they were perfect, and where Sherlock, by this time, would probably have begun wiggling his under such scrutiny, Loki did not. He maybe sort of…clenched. A little. A very little. In a way that completely removed sucking from Sherlock's mind and instead caused him to think _I bet those would feel good doing that against the back of my calves._

Startled at his own thought, Sherlock took a step back from it and looked up.

Loki met his gaze and did absolutely nothing.

Sherlock took another step back, then Sherlock paused. He waited for Loki to complain about the stepping. Or the toe scruitinising. Or that London contained more Pret a Manger cafes than the population could possibly sustain. Sherlock had no clue what gods generally complain about, but he knew for certain that this particular god, when irked, would totally be the kind that could find _something_ about which to be aggrieved. A petulant man can faultlessly recognise petulance in another.

Speaking of petulant…

"I'm leaving," Sherlock said, apropos of absolutely nothing at all.

Instead of fighting petulance with more petulance, Loki stepped back, bowed his head.

Sherlock nodded at Loki's front door. _Good. Fine. That was just fine. Here I go._

Sherlock cleared his throat, nodded again, looked back at Loki. "Good. Fi…"

Sherlock's mouth dropped open to release a moan.

Loki of Asgard was slowly stroking his—

* * *

John was in the very middle of blowing his nose. He paused when Sherlock paused. Then he quickly finished blowing and said, "Sorry." Then he curled tighter still against Sherlock's hip and waited.

And waited.

And… A quick breath of revelation. "Oh! This?" John lofted his soggy tissue. "Did you want to hand them to me? I should have asked. Did I just take one without asking?"

"Tissues are—"

"Because that's fine. I mean I know you're kind of fond of the box."

"Tissues are—"

"Or I can just use the sleeve of my dressing gown. Or your pretty dressing gown. If that's what you'd rather I do. Or not. I mean I can just drizzle quietly, I really don't care. I don't want to interrupt. I really don't. Because I don't need—"

"TissuesAreNotTheProblemJohn."

The good doctor clutched that soggy tissue to his breast. "Oh god you can't be done, you just can't be done. I meant it Sherlock, if this ends suddenly and no one gets off I'm going to really need you to make stuff up. You have had the single best erotic dream since erotic dreams were invented and I'll cry if no one comes."

Because John's illness was obviously leaving him a wee bit forgetful, Sherlock again lofted the anchor of his tissue box and looked pointedly at the thing pretty much pointing up at him. "Very, _very_ much not the first one, remember?"

John, whose fever had risen by two entire degrees in the last thirty minutes and who was slowly creeping toward something similar to a fine and gentle delirium, giggled. "Right I forgot. I think I'm getting sick and maybe a little delirious and by the way this is the best dream ever, did I already say that, anyway why did you stop?"

Sherlock blinked down at John. Then he blinked up at the far wall. Then he blinked down at John again and said very softly, "Because the sex is coming."

John sneezed in Sherlock's eye.

After apologies were congestively made and the tissue box saw some use other than as an erection holder-downer, John gurgled happily, "Oh Sherlock this whole dream has been wall-to-wall sex already don't you know?"

That's another thing about John Watson and Sherlock Holmes and their flagrant disregard for the constraint of boxes. To a Watson-Holmes and a Holmes-Watson sex isn't just a nice, hard cock sliding deep into a nice, willing arse, oh hell no.

Sex is sitting on the tube from Heathrow and passing the hour's journey home running your fingers slow, slower, slowest over your husband's palm. Sex is watching your sweetheart be brilliant at a crime scene and looking at him through your lashes so hard he feels eye fucked twice. Sex is whispering against his belly after you've come, murmuring a ribald, sweet, silly string of endearments and diminutives until his flesh at last rouses and you can give as well as you so recently got.

Sex is touching and not touching, it's waiting and hurrying, it's doing and sometimes it's emphatically _not doing,_ and so yeah, as soon as the words were out of John's mouth Sherlock realised that in this dream he'd already done quite a bit of grunt-and-push, so to speak, and the fact that orgasms were on their way, well essentially that was just a nice frame for an already seductive composition.

Sherlock blinked down at John. John grinned up at Sherlock. Sherlock got out of bed. John got extremely stroppy about Sherlock getting out of bed. Sherlock ignored the strop and disappeared for two-and-a-half minutes. John counted every second of those minutes. Out loud. Pausing once to sneeze, once to blow his nose, and twice to casually wank a little. When Sherlock returned he came freighted with Lemsip and a fresh box of tissues.

John grunted his approval at this, consumed the flu remedy (burning his tongue because he drank too fast), dabbed at his nose (only blowing when Sherlock insisted), then John looked up at Sherlock (who was looming at the side of the bed), made sure Sherlock was still hard (this somehow seemed important), patted the space Sherlock had vacated, then did a double-handed gesture (come here, here, _here),_ and the moment Sherlock resumed his position against the headboard John snuggled up to his hip (it's a very nice hip), popped a lozenge in his mouth, and murmured nasally, "Was he…was he touching…" here John dropped his voice. Being as that voice was already heavily mucus-muted this had the effect of causing him to go nearly sub-aural. "…his you know what?"

* * *

It should have looked ludicrous. It did not look ludicrous.

It looked _luscious._

Sherlock blinked himself a question. Luscious? Sherlock nodded himself an answer. Yes. _Luscious._ That was the sole word that applied to that thing that Loki was doing and that thing was fisting his hand around one of the gold horns on his pretty head, slowly stroking and…and…softly groaning.

_Oh fuck fuck fuckity fuck._

* * *

Sherlock side-long gazed down at John.

John nodded in a very _yes that's exactly what you say when that happens_ manner.

Sherlock continued.

* * *

"Hard," said Sherlock Holmes, and before Loki could titillate, tease, breathe on him or _stop stroking_ in an effort to fluster, confuse, or arouse, Sherlock plowed on and _used his words._

"Hard, hard, very hard. I want you to make me make you as hard as you can. And harder than that. But first I want to…"

Loki might not be the smartest bear in a plush flat 72-stories above the Thames but that did not mean he was a fool. So Loki continued to do exactly what he was doing while Sherlock paused dramatically, then said.

"But first I want to suck your horns."

_Well, don't we all Sherlock? Don't we all._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait."
> 
> Sherlock waited.
> 
> "Did you…did Lok—d-did you both just?"
> 
> Sherlock cleared his throat. "Yes."

Sherlock Holmes likes putting things in his mouth.

Before John, Sherlock used that mouth for purposes for which it was not intended. During experiments, when both hands were busy for example, he'd clench a pipette between his teeth, stoppering the thing with his tongue until such time as the mild toxin, acid, or algae within was needed—then two times in five he'd forget and breathe in through his mouth instead of his nose and accidentally ingest some mild toxin, acid, or algae.

Before John Sherlock would almost always taste at crime scenes anything that looked like blood but which he was ninety-three percent certain was not blood. Lab tests took too long and gave criminals lead time his talented tongue could deny them, so for quite awhile Sherlock tended to stuff all sorts of evidence in his mouth—and only got mildly sick one time out of six.

After John things changed rather a lot.

For example, seven times out of ten John could be persuaded to hold a pipette nearly indefinitely so long as he was promised whatever he happened to strongly desire that day. This has included an hour of peace in which to read, breakfast in bed, a buggering, the last six biscuits, or a kiss.

After John, Sherlock was denied the use of his mouth for the sifting of clues, for another example. If they were at a crime scene and he forgot, lifting anything clue-like toward his lips, Sherlock would inevitably find himself on the pavement, a small man sitting on his chest, swiping a finger across his palate and demanding "Spit, spit for god's sake!" This had the annoying effect of slowing Sherlock down and usually caused every constable within one hundred metres to stop and stare.

Yet the way in which Sherlock processed clues or did experiments was not the biggest oral change post-John. After the small man made his big impact, Sherlock learned he liked things in his mouth that were not pipettes or clues.

Sherlock liked _John_ in his mouth. He liked him in there for the purposes of nibbling, he liked him in there for tasting, but Sherlock especially liked John in his mouth for _sucking._ And what Sherlock liked to suck was pretty much any part of John which John wanted to have sucked.

This has often been John's cock. Through the years John's responses to Sherlock's lavish lips wrapped around that part of him have included chanting Sherlock's name, crooning a sing-song of endearments, or at last confessing the identity of a boot camp fling when John was on the tip-top cusp of coming and Sherlock _stopped sucking._

But cock is not the only thing Sherlock sucks. He's watched goosebumps skitter like heat lightning down John's chest when he's pressed behind him and sucked a munificent lobe or the salt of a stubbled neck.

On snowy mornings, when the only duty presenting itself is staying warm and snug in bed, Sherlock will spend hours dreamily sucking on John's nipples, an affection that makes them each dozy, then later indolently aroused.

In certain moods Sherlock has happily been in the mood to suck on John's eyebrows, bellybutton, the tip of his nose, his elbows, knees, and butt cheeks.

Yet John often responds just as grandly to having _Sherlock's_ parts lavished with oral affection. For example, Sherlock's more than one time brought John to orgasm by wriggling bare toes between his sweetheart's legs and softly moaning as he sucks his own fingers.

Yet with all that sucking, Sherlock finds that he hasn't one time thought about sucking John's horns, mostly because John does not have any. If John did have horns Sherlock would suck them. If John had horns Sherlock's pretty sure he'd suck them rather a lot and in any fashion John found pleasing. Sherlock would himself be especially pleased if a horned John made the sounds Loki was making right now, as he stroked himself. His horns, as he stroked his _horns._

So extensively was Sherlock daydreaming— _in his dream_ —about sucking and about horns and about Loki (or John, at this point even Sherlock's subconscious isn't clear), that for two long seconds Sherlock did not notice several things.

The first was that his own mouth was open.

The second was his tongue slicking over his lip.

The third was that he was moving toward Loki.

And the fourth thing that Sherlock didn't notice was that Loki was moving away.

By the time Sherlock observed these things he stopped doing one, two, and three, then petulantly pointed out four. "You're moving away. Why?"

Loki Laufeyson of Asgard, Jotunheim, and most recently 32 London Bridge Street, SE 1 9SG, whispered, "You know why." Then the god giggled high-pitched and breathless and so very, very fine.

And Sherlock's erection throbbed in over-aroused Morse code: _Sherlock Holmes, you are going to hell._

* * *

"Sherlock. _Sherlock."_

At this point Sherlock and the tissue box may be conjoined.

"Sherlock. It's all _right."_

Sherlock did not think it was all right. To relay this in the strongest possible terms Sherlock stared at the wall, lifted his chin, and continued to use a cardboard box to do awful, awful things to his innocent, overinflated penis.

It would take John years to make the point—and the point would have to be pointedly made again and again through those years—but eventually John Watson's husband _will_ learn, and he'll become easier with desiring an actor or pop culture scientist or a fictional Asgardian immortal. But that future day appeared to not be _this_ day and so Sherlock committed tissue box atrocities upon his member and he felt guilty.

"The giggling made you think of me, didn't it?"

_Mash._

"You love my giggle."

_Maaash._

"Especially when we're in bed."

_MashMashMash!_

John contemplated yanking that tissue box out of Sherlock's hands but was pretty sure that would close Pandora's box and John would go and drown himself in the toilet immediately if he himself was in any way responsible for a premature end to this story.

"So when Loki giggled you got turned on."

_Mash?_

"Even more turned on."

Sherlock no longer mashed, but that chin still jutted and he continued to stare at the far wall.

"Turned on enough to do things. Things you've not done with me."

Slashes of pretty scarlet flared on Sherlock's cheeks.

"Maybe this is how we start," John whispered. "Maybe we try things in dreams."

John went silent for so long that Sherlock was forced to unjut his chin and with the most peripheral of visions check if his husband had fallen asleep.

John grinned against Sherlock's skin, kissed. "And then we bring what works, what we like, into the real world. Erotic little gifts from wonderful little dreams." John giggled, much like an Asgardian might, and said, "And by little dreams I mean dreams that are so vast they require Pan-O-Vision and the lurid charms of Technicolor."

Forget peripheral vision. Sherlock looked down at John, jaw a little unhinged, big brows tugged up at the middle, his face the very picture of _what fresh magic are you?_

Right from the start Sherlock didn't understand the rules. The ones by which everyone insisted on living. He didn't understand when to shut up, when to talk, what to do when he did either. And over time he screwed up so often and so badly that he simply learned to loathe the rules—all of them, any of them.

Then there was John, who seemed to have a whole different set of rules. Strange ones that allowed him to compliment where others complained, rules that let him kill without question, rules that allowed for the exceptional and the rare—which didn't only encompass Sherlock, it included _them._

And though it's been years now, years of being John's lover and then his husband, Sherlock's still amazed by John's rules because John's rules don't seem to fetter, they free, and how was that possible?

"Don't worry, I'll keep telling you, until you believe it. This is okay Sherlock. All of this, all of you." John blew his nose until his ears squeaked. Then he giggled. "Now, what happened next?"

* * *

"You know why."

Sherlock stood still on plush carpet in a lavish flat in front of an immortal man and he listened to the after-echo of those words. Then he scowled rather dramatically because no, frankly very much _no,_ he had not one fresh clue why Loki was moving away, why the earth goes around the sun, or why for the love of god they were _still standing there,_ why everything so far was still subtext and innuendo, why they were still dancing around one another with arched brows and sassy comments.

Sherlock was about to say exactly that when instead he said to himself in a manner most shrill: _oh no he didn't!_

But yes, yes Loki _did_ just roll his eyes at Sherlock in exactly the manner that Sherlock rolls his eyes at everyone else when they've absolutely bored the living—

Sherlock rolled his eyes at himself. Oh. _Oh._ It was so _obvious._

This thing between them, this dance of words and looks and fleeting touches? It was sex, just as John had said, but it was a kind of sex that prolonged the moment, maximised sensation, it staved off that dread of which they'd spoken earlier: Boredom.

Because yes, boredom is the bane of the brilliant mind, lurking ever at the edges of a sharp intellect, waiting for the bright flare of interesting things to fade. The moment they do _it_ starts to feed.

Though Loki was no Sherlock, _you_ try being immortal and lord of nearly all you survey. Unrelieved abundance can become as dull as anything else endlessly repeated, and so here they stood, and frankly here they would stand for _as long as they could stand it._

Because the wanting, and the endless _talking_ about the wanting, and then still not having? Very not boring.

At last understanding with his mind what his body had long ago known, Sherlock took a step back.

Loki grinned toothily in delight and after many long seconds took a step forward.

Sherlock took another step back.

A bigger grin and Loki took _half_ a step forward.

Sherlock half a step back.

And this was precisely the point where the dream began to derail, as so many dreams do, on the cusp of wandering into the sensible territory of: _Oh, so you want to dance? Okay fine, everyone's now an anthropomorphised teapot at the ball_ …and yet, mercifully, though on the very Disney-esque brink, that did not happen.

There was a good reason for that.

In a very real world, in a very real flat called 221B, a sleeping John Watson-Holmes got a bit cold. So John Watson-Holmes scooted backward, toward the nearby source of body heat, all six feet of it. When he had comfortably slotted his sleeping self against his husband's front, his husband's sleeping self comfortably slotted his erection against the crack of John's arse. And he began to lightly thrust.

And thus refocused, in an epic dream inside a genius's head, Loki—without even a hint of a handle or a spout—took two steps forward and bowed at the waist. Sherlock then proceeded to open his beautiful mouth and slowly run his tongue up the curve of one hard, gold horn.

Loki and John moaned.

* * *

Sherlock held his breath, looked down.

John's eyes were closed, brows drawn in concentration. He was a little bit wanking.

Sherlock continued.

* * *

At first Sherlock only licked Loki's left horn because it made the immortal moan and the moaning, oh the moaning was fantastic. Then Sherlock was on a mission and he licked higher and higher, but finally stopped near the top because for the love of gods he absolutely could not figure out how to get the tip of the horn _in his mouth._

And he wanted that thing in his mouth because the entire point of sucking is to _suck._ But you know what? _You_ try getting your lush lips around something that's [curved so sharply](http://cdn1.sciencefiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/avengers-loki-tom-hiddleston-hd-wallpapers.jpg) the only way you'd be able to find any oral gratification in it is if you climbed on your dream paramour's pretty head and contorted yourself like a [Claisen distillation adapter](http://www.kimble-chase.com/advancedwebpage.aspx?CategoryText1=Distillation&CategoryText2=Distillation%20Adapters&CategoryText3=Claisen%20Distillation%20Adapters), but then you'd _still_ have to—

Sherlock grunted and stood on his tiptoes, hoping an extra three inches would give him the impossible flexibility to lean, curve, reach and—

Sherlock grunted again, tilted his head sideways in hopes that he could maybe kind of out-flank the—

Finally Sherlock just opened his mouth really wide, grabbed hold of Loki's right horn and—

The god jerked away, his cheeks flushing so-faintly blue and he hissed, "None of that."

Sherlock got off his tiptoes casually. He then casually took a step back to make room for Loki's petulance. Then without any casualness whatsoever Sherlock took in the immense, splintered walls of glass rising tall around them, the roof of a few faint stars, and the clement breeze ruffling dark hair.

They were on the Shard's open-air observation deck.

Sherlock chuffed out a breath, scratched the side of his neck, and matter-of-factly got right to the heart of the matter. "So. You want me to react while _you_ act. You want me to pretend you're in control."

Loki started, a flush of scarlet on cheeks replaced the faintest of ice blues, and then he began giggling like a loon.

Again.

Look, at this point dream Sherlock would like a little clarity. He's super okay with making sex last. It's kind of a Sherlock _thing._ Heck, boxing day last year he and John spent six and a half hours hard, just to see if they could, but by now Sherlock's really not sure if Loki wants to bed him or just boss him around.

Still giggling, Loki threw arms wide, head back, and as if he were informing the dark city glittering around them shouted, "Oh bed my darling, of course bed!"

As if in portent, the clement breeze stilled. A distant gull went quiet. Even the murmuring river far below seemed to hush. And as if it were the most natural thing in the world Sherlock thought: _Can you read my mind?_

For one second, two, Sherlock read Loki's, so to speak. By noting—even in night-light—the twitch of a lip, the breath caught in a long, pale throat, the consulting detective knew the god was kicking himself for being caught out, was debating how best to lie.

_Don't bother._

Sherlock didn't think more than those two words, because saying, _I'll know it if you lie. Your face is an open book, like all the rest of you, from that mouth you can't seem to close, to those legs you spread absurdly wide every time you sit down._

"I'm sorry."

_What?_

Now it was Loki stepping back. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to do it."

Well that was completely unexpected. Sherlock wasn't sure which stunned him more, the admission or the contrition. "It's…"

Loki took another step back. "Arrogance people can stomach. Bravado, sarcasm, tears and tantrums, people will put up with all of that and more," Loki said, eyes gone wide and glassy, "if you're pretty, if you're interesting, if you _thrill_ …oh they'll put up with almost anything." The pretty, interesting man laughed, a tear sliding fast down his face. "But this they don't forgive, this they fear and with reason. When the sanctity of your soul is violated of course you spit and hiss and _move away."_

Sherlock took a step forward.

"I didn't ask for this you know, I can't stop it, any more than you can stop seeing all the things you see with that sky-blue gaze. All we can do, dear detective, is shut up about it." This time Loki's laugh was real. "But like _that's_ ever going to happen."

Sherlock took another step forward. They were close enough to see the pulse in one another's throat, and wasn't that strange, to be so near another man, to have to look up, just a little?

"I live with a man," Sherlock said, "I _love_ a man who already sees, senses, maybe smells so much about me. He knows me better than I ever will. I love him for that and so much more. Yet even with all of that, I am not surrendered, I'm not fully known. No, Loki, the sanctity of my soul is mine to give, it can't be taken, not by you, not by anyone."

Mortal and god.

The balance seems tipped, always and forever, in favour of the god; a god can do most anything, while a mortal is always _mere._

Bullshit.

As long as mortal and immortal each have hearts they're as equal as a warmth-giving sun to a tide-taming moon. Their purposes and powers might vary, but in the end they're more alike than they could ever be different.

 _Now,_ Sherlock said, _where were we?_

There it was again, Loki's grin, the one that was all teeth and sass and glee. He looked as if he wanted to say something, a whole host of things about gods and hearts and long-fingered touches but in the end he thought better of it and instead dropped chin to chest.

_Ah, yes._

As if complicit a warm wind kicked up, pushing Sherlock forward. A distant gull laughed raucous. Even the Thames seemed now to murmur _go on, go on._ So Sherlock did.

He took double-handed hold of the horns on Loki's helm and held them long enough to see if Loki would complain.

Then Sherlock began to lift the helmet from the god's head, moving slow to see if Loki would suddenly transport them to the middle of Euston station.

And then Sherlock removed that helm and pressed it against his belly just long enough to see if Loki would—

Loki did.

Holding Sherlock's eye, the god was already moaning as the tip of one gold horn slid inside his mouth.

Sherlock sighed. Because Sherlock knows moaning.

There are the manufactured, like when Sherlock sighs for John's pleasure deliciously pornographic and entirely fake moans, until John's neck arches and he's murmuring breathless _sweetheart, angel, my love._

There are the real, like when he and John make love and one of them moans raw and pushes in deep, murmuring breathless _my love my love._

Loki's moan was that. Real, visceral, it was needy and desperate and it made Sherlock crowd close, press his mouth against Loki's, the hard tip of a curved gold horn very much, totally, completely in the way, and somehow that was _fantastic,_ the two of them fellating the hard thing between them, their tongues swiping hot against each other, teeth chattering against cool metal—

* * *

"Metal?"

Sherlock stuttered to silence, choking delicately on his own halted arousal. "Hu? What?"

John grunted by way of reply, then pushed and pulled his husband, gestures seemingly random until they weren't, and finally Sherlock got it. He lifted the tissue box from the boner in his lap and, path thus clear, John clambered over him and to the other side of the bed, snuffling all the way.

"It's sweaty over there," he offered and instinctively Sherlock rested his hand on the recently-vacated space. Sure enough the little nest left behind by John's little body was fever hot and damp.

"John," Sherlock began, about to suggest naps, Lemsip, cock-sucking, or other fever-reducing measures, but he never got the chance.

John made a long arm across Sherlock's lap, reseated the tissue box _in_ Sherlock's lap—went so far as to gently mash it down a little—then said, "I'm fine. I'm sick and I'm fine. You're going to keep talking even if this takes all night because the second you go to sleep you're probably going to over-write your dream hard drive with a dream of white butterflies on white flowers backed by a white winter sky and if that happens I'm going to need psychiatric care to manage my grief so no, I'm not napping, you're not napping, and please, just…okay? Please?"

Perhaps for the first time during the entire telling of this dream Sherlock grinned wide. He stroked John's dewy brow and said so softly he might have been murmuring _I love you._ "Yes, metal."

John's brow knit. "Wouldn't that be really heavy? I mean he'd have to have a neck like Thor."

Sherlock nodded, as if he remembered who Thor was, then said. "He's a god, I suppose they have strong necks."

John's brow unknit as if this was logical, something you'd find on the Wikipedia page about Norse gods, then he shifted until he was fitted perfectly against Sherlock's hip, returned to his lazy masturbation and said, "Okay, I'm ready."

* * *

Yes, well, Loki's moan was real, visceral, and sexy, sexy, sexy. It made Sherlock moan in reply and horn in harder on the horny action. It was wonderful, their mouths touching but not enough, their tongues slicking just barely into one another, now-hot metal a kind of oral chastity device between them. It was fantastic and delicious—oh yes, especially that—because Loki not only smells of pomegranates, he tastes of them too, that thin-lipped mouth all sweet, tart, and intense.

Perhaps an ordinary detective or a regular deity would have at this point taken double-handed hold of the helm and chucked it over someone's shoulder, but Sherlock doesn't know from ordinary and Loki's always been irregular and so instead Loki clutched high at the right horn and shortly found Sherlock's hand wrapped around his, then Sherlock found his other hand covered with Loki's and together they moaned _higher_ because both their palms were sweating—

* * *

John wheezed and got more serious about his wanking. Sherlock didn't so much as pause.

* * *

—and oh yes that's sexy, when a man's body has grown hot because of you, when he wants you so badly he's wet.

So as long-fingered hands slicked over each other, Sherlock keened and Loki bit and down below they tried to grind against each other but with the helm between them they couldn't and that was just fine too because here's a fact: the sounds of desire have weight. So Loki? He listened, and he _felt._

Listened to Sherlock's voice grow hoarse and deep, and felt himself get harder. Listened to Sherlock's breathing grow sharp and fast, and felt his skin grow wetter.

And Sherlock? Oh he listened to Loki's teeth scrape at metal and listened to Loki keen and those things felt exactly, perfectly, wonderfully like a hand between his legs.

All of that would have been enough, in time, but at the _same_ time each man at last let go of the helm, ignored its clatter, and as Sherlock eagerly reached out, slid both hands into black hair, curved them along a skull, pressed gently at its base, and leaned forward—

"Wait."

His entire body flushing cold with cranky adrenaline, for a good long moment Sherlock thought about saying something like, "Oh dear fucking god are you absolutely god damn kidding me with this?" but he didn't. Partially because Sherlock rarely talks that way, even in dreams, and partially because the whole dazzling grin thing was going on again and Loki was stepping away, pulling Sherlock with him into the moon's bright light.

Then hosanna, finally, _at last,_ he who was burdened with blah blah blah leaned forward, and Sherlock's throat went deliciously thick with the humid, sweet-smelling heat of the man, his mouth busy with the tongue of him, and then they were wrapped tight together, kissing, touching, breathing, _needing._

And almost immediately it started.

The mingle of their moans broke apart, Sherlock's voice a constant purring hum of want, but Loki's, oh that went somewhere else entirely. _That_ went over to grandeur.

For each time one of them moved to push deeper into the other's mouth, to nip careful at lip, Loki's moans got louder, more decadent. He _sounded_ like pomegranates if a man can—and even if a man can't, a _god_ can—and squirming in Sherlock's arms was six fine feet and two wriggling inches of divinity, a divinity who _sounded_ like sweetness and tang, and each time he got louder Sherlock got harder, which made Loki even _more_ vocal.

They danced on the edge of this _everything_ for the longest time and then a small little nothing tipped them over.

The wind whipped hard through the Shard's shards, gathering cold from the splintered walls of glass and metal, Sherlock drew in a high, surprised breath, and at the sound of it Loki tipped back his head and shouted "Oh god!" and started to come. Then Sherlock did, too.

* * *

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, _wait."_

Sherlock waited.

"Did you…did Lok—d-did you both just?"

Sherlock cleared his throat. He wondered what the opposite of a *clatter* was because whatever it was it would mean _less_ attention instead of more wouldn't it? Because right now Sherlock wanted a bit less than he was getting as in maybe minus none? However, Sherlock does not know what the reverse of a *clatter* is and so he said, "Yes."

Under the duvet John's hand stilled. And then it fell away from his cock. He looked crestfallen. "Oh."

Sherlock blinked, immediately realised the obvious. He petted John's brow. "There's more."

John blinked back. Beneath the duvet he tentatively touched his privates. "More?"

Sherlock lofted the tissue box, which had recently grown less important somehow. The absence of the box exposed the presence of a stiff penis. "Not the first one. Or the second."

John thought about what these fantastic words were saying. "So there's more moaning?"

Sherlock nodded.

"There's more touching?"

Sherlock nodded.

"And more sex?"

Sherlock nodded quickly.

"And sass?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes as if that one was obvious.

John, gurgling happily, threw a leg over Sherlock and started humping him. Then, in a voice low and hoarse and sweet as pomegranates, he said, "Go on."

_Holy moly that was over ten thousand words before the orgasms, which might be a Chez Atlin record. Please don't ever let me do that again. Whew. Now. Well. Please allow me to choose my next words carefully. There is more of this story…coming._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his dream Sherlock wondered if his dream was over. That would make a great deal of sense for a wet dream, being as the wet had been achieved, but Sherlock was pretty sure this wasn't just a dream about sex. He knew things had so meandered that surely it was one of those dreams in which his mind was trying to 'tell him something.'
> 
> Sherlock wondered if pretending he was deaf would work against his own subconscious. He did not have long to wonder because...

"Oh."

Orgasms are not ordinary in dreams.

_"Oh."_

Because when you dream, there need be no limit to the pleasure.

_"Oooh…"_

And when you're a genius, dreaming of getting off with a god? Well then the pleasure can be as lavish and lingering as you want.

_"Ooooooh…"_

Sherlock wanted.

"Oh Sh…"

So did Loki. And the immortal? Well he expressed that want loudly. As the gorgeous intensity _intensified,_ their orgasms rising toward a teeth-clenching peak, the sounds the immortal made, though loud, had the grace of need.

"Shh…"

Of want.

"Shhh…"

Of _joy._

_"Shhhhhh…"_

A minute ago John had said _wait wait wait_ so alarmed that the story might be over that he hadn't waited long enough to hear the details. But once he knew there was more he wanted more—" _Go on"—_ and so Sherlock went on because there was still so much to tell.

Standing there—human and immortal still _standing,_ how strange—in that beautiful shard of glass rising sharp over their city, Sherlock clutched Loki so hard he could feel the man's heart pounding against his own bones. And because Sherlock's subconscious craves order, it imposed a _queue_ for the pleasure, so his thrumming heart and aching cock patiently waited their turn, and Sherlock let Loki's avid sounds wash over him, let the god grind and growl and moan, and when Loki finally shouted and came—

_"…errrrlock!_

—Sherlock absorbed every detail. Dreaming as lavish as he lives, the good detective's mind went with the lushest words he could think of to describe the man in his arms: _peacock, rainforest, fire, roar, honey, big, bigger, biggest and…and yet…_

Howling the absent roof down, hollering so loud the glass walls chimed high in sympathy, thrashing in Sherlock's arms not to break free but to burrow, Loki tasted-touched-heard himself through Sherlock's senses, because Loki is a god times two, Asgardian and Frost Giant, he's as rare as consulting detectives, and so delving into that beautiful mind he saw himself the way Sherlock saw him and what he saw he _loved._

At first.

It wouldn't be until a little later that he'd blink-remember all of it flashes of memory coming to him, and he'd at last observe _all_ of what he'd seen in Sherlock's mind.

And what he'd see would make the petulant god spit and hiss and whine. He'd pace and prowl and say terrible, frightening things. And Sherlock would listen to every accusation, every epithet, defending himself against none.

When Loki had at last used all of fury's fuel, burned himself out, it would eventually send him to his knees.

And down between Sherlock's.

But that was for later. Much later. First Loki of Asgard had to revel. And Sherlock Holmes was next in the queue.

* * *

After all the shouting, the wriggling, the clutching and the giggling, Loki at last responded as just about any biped must after a spectacular orgasm, he went mushy-muscled and weak-kneed in Sherlock's arms.

Only for an moment.

After, he nuzzled his face into Sherlock's hair and crooned into curls. He held tight and writhed sinuous, and it would be one thousand percent correct to say that what they did looked like dancing though it sounded every hard inch like rutting. Sherlock was already boneless, his forehead on Loki's shoulder, arms wrapped vice-tight around the god, and when his body finally reached its peak and he began to come, Sherlock stuttered through it in rare silence—and yeah, somewhere in the back of his mind he realised that Loki's noise had caused him to mute his own, which maybe explained why John was rarely over-vocal and maybe Sherlock was going to have to do something about that next time, yes, next time they made love but—

—but for now Sherlock was coming in a dream and coming in real life, the pleasure of both wet and warm and while in real life he ejaculated prettily into the sheets, in the dream he seemed to come from the roots of his hair to the soles of his finely-shod feet, the only sound a low groan muzzled soft by Loki's shoulder. When everything finally played out—and it took so long, because maybe gods can do that to you when they whisper "Yes, beautiful, oh yes," in your ear as you clutch—well finally, after, when it was done, their dance ended in a boneless stumble that would have tumbled them to the hardwood slats of the observation deck except Loki didn't let that happen.

* * *

Two men collapsed to the plush green carpeting in Loki's sitting room. One immediately rolled onto his back in a heap of high giggles, the other panted on hands and knees, head hanging low.

From that delicate and vulnerable posture Sherlock concentrated on regaining his breath and his wits. He did this by cataloguing the responses of his body, including buzzing nipples, tingling balls, hair he was pretty sure was standing on end, the way it did that time he'd sat bare-bottomed on the generator John had hooked to—

Sherlock cut that thought off, instead fiercely concentrating on working the muscles that would lift his head.

There was an exceedingly good reason for that.

But first a digression.

John Watson hates quiet. John Watson loves quiet. John Watson might some day need therapy to cope with the confusion of exactly what it is he wants, but here's the thing: When 221B is silent, there's always a reason and sometimes the reasons are fantastic and sometimes they are seriously, completely, the entire opposite of fantastic.

In the fantastic reasons for quiet category comes coming. After an orgasm John can often depend on Sherlock passing clean out for several hours. As in sleeps-with-his-mouth-open-and-makes-wheezy-snores type slumber.

This is a fine and precious thing and when this happens John will alternate between blissful reading, affectionate gazing, or using Photoshop to put Sherlock's head on pictures of octopuses and otters (he only did that once because he laughed so hard he woke Sherlock, who got all handsy and ended up using a quartered garden hose to imitate sexy tentacles and that had not ended well _at all)._

At the whole opposite end of fantastic quiet is the quiet that drips-seethes-oozes-or-blazes from a bored Sherlock, a cranky Sherlock, a Sherlock that is on fire, a Sherlock that is trying to put out a fire, or pretty much any sort of silent Sherlock that isn't related to orgasm or otherwise-normal sleep.

This digression is by way of explaining it was this second category of quiet that Sherlock knew he was hearing now. Because Loki's high-pitched giggling had ceased as if deprived of power and the silence left in that vast and fire-lighted sitting room was so heavy Sherlock could feel it weighing against his skin.

Still on hands and knees, still half-way certain his hair was standing straight out from his head, Sherlock at last looked up.

Loki wasn't there.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, much the way John does when newly aware of A Quiet.

Sherlock sat back on his heels and took a deep breath. In his dream he wondered if his dream was over. That would make a great deal of sense for a wet dream, being as the wet had been achieved, but…

…Sherlock was pretty sure this wasn't just a dream about sex. In his dream he knew that things had so meandered that surely it was one of those—air quotes here—'psychologically important' dreams, in which his mind was trying to 'tell him something.'

In his dream Sherlock wondered if pretending he was deaf would work against his own subconscious and its desire to communicate with him.

He did not have long to wonder on this because apparently Mr. Glorious Purpose had grown tired of going undetected by the genius at detection and finally cleared his throat.

Sherlock turned. A dozen feet distant and dramatically lighted by the fire's illumination was Loki's kabuki face. An always-bold visage—pale, with slashes of brow, lip, and cheekbone—it could be hard to read as any mask, even for Sherlock. And so right now Sherlock didn't try. He was not long left wondering.

"Filthy man," murmured the god, turning toward the broad glass wall that looked over the Thames. In it he gazed at Sherlock's reflection with his own. "Bad, bad man."

Mask slipping away, Loki frowned at Sherlock's placid expression. Then his gaze shifted and he looked into his own eyes, as if reading unexpected things in them. Slowly he lifted a hand, danced fingers over the glass, seeming to touch his own hair and neck and face. "You say I'm vain."

He petted his own reflection, as tender as a father with his child.

"You say I'm selfish."

Sherlock had said nothing of the sort, but dreams are full of short cuts. In muttering these fancies to itself, the mind has read the script and need not state the obvious. So Sherlock didn't speak, knowing it was not his turn, that it wouldn't be his turn for a good few minutes, that there was fire coming, only he wasn't the one who was about to be burned.

"You think I'm a petulant child in a man's body, that I overcompensate because I fear I underwhelm. I know how your _human_ mind works. You think I talk too much, laugh too loudly, that I'm too tall for an Asgardian, too short for a Frost Giant you—"

Loki clenched his teeth and fists, his eyes a malignant red that surely must ache and as if in affirmation Loki moaned and pressed the heels of his hands to them then looked again at the glass wall that made up the entire north side of the room.

The glass was no longer there.

A breeze blew sharp into the flat and Loki lifted his head to it, suddenly serene. "What you think means nothing because there's nothing you can _do_ about what you think. But me? Oh Sherlock…I'm limitless."

The god leaned into the wind, but overcompensated, almost tumbled, then giggled, the sound sharp as glass, "Well almost."

It was not time to talk yet, and so Sherlock did not talk.

"So your little thoughts, Sherlock Holmes?" Here Loki inched forward, bare toes wriggling right over the edge of the nothing, eyes closed to London's darkness, and said, "Mean nothing to me. Your little _comparisons_ between him and I? Mean even less."

It was still not time to speak and so Sherlock did not. Because Sherlock knew exactly what Loki was talking about and he knew that Loki had to _talk about it._

Talk about how, as he'd reveled in his body's pleasure, happily shouting the house down, how he at first saw Sherlock's admiration, his delight that there was _someone_ more grandly theatrical, more ridiculous and vocal and bigger than he was, and then flash-quick saw another thing, a simple thought in Sherlock's head, one that was bigger than the two of them put together and that thought was this:

… _and…and yet, you're not John._

Sherlock learned long ago to go without enough sleep, enough food, enough _love,_ but he never learned how to shut his mouth or his mind, so despite himself he thought: _Did you expect to mean more to me than a man for whom I'd die? Die now, tomorrow, yesterday, any day and every day forever amen. Gods understand that, don't they, if they understand nothing else. Amen? It means—_

"So be it." Loki smiled at a cloud-dark moon as if its dimmed light limned his cheeks pretty. "I prefer the old-fashioned 'so mote it be.' More Shakespearean if you ask me, but you didn't. So are you through with your devotions or will you now enquire whether I'd like to accept your lord and saviour John Watson into my heart and…"

Loki huffed, faded to silence. He'd expected Sherlock to interrupt him for quite awhile now and had instead got nothing but attentive _attention._ He needed resistance to be witty, he needed invective fire to fuel him.

"Do you want to know something Sherlock? Let me tell you a fine and delicate secret. Human bones," he whispered, "break so easily. When humans _fall."_

Without looking around the god leaned forward, the only thing between him and a far-away earth: Absolutely nothing.

Sherlock knew what was coming next. So Loki knew that Sherlock knew. So of course Loki did not disappoint.

"Come to me human."

Without a glance behind him, just the imperious tilt of a beckoning head, Loki waited.

* * *

"Ooooow!"

Sherlock looked down at his lap, wide-eyed.

There were two good reasons for that.

The first: What was in Sherlock's lap _hurt._

The second reason was surprise: Sherlock had absolutely no idea when John had insinuated his hand beneath the tightly-clutched tissue box and taken firm hold of his cock.

Sherlock looked at John. He uttered approximately three dozen words in one: "John."

John looked up at Sherlock, wide-eyed. With a grunt he relaxed his grip. "It was as soon as you started talking about the quiet. I knew it was going to be bad. I needed some security." John waggled his erect security blanket. The tissue box bounced merrily.

"I'm sorry I squeezed so hard. There was all the coming and shouting and now he's so _angry_ and I don't know why and this is getting very intense."

"I can stop if—Ooooow!"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" John ran his free hand underneath his dewy nose and wheezed. "I'm sick and delirious and worried and if you stop now I'll drown in my own mucus. The only thing helping me deal with the fact that I'm dying from the flu is this story so could you please please please keep going and I promise I'll stop touching your penis."

Making good, John released his husband's hard-on and went back to clutching his own. After a moment Sherlock reached under the duvet, fished out John's fist, and affixed it again to himself. He petted John's head, murmured, "It's all right," knowing the good doctor would understand that he was talking about a mighty flu as well as a window-less wall more than five dozen stories up from the streets of London.

It took a few long moments but John blinked away his anxiety, shudder-sighed, then settled in secure.

Sherlock continued.

* * *

Sherlock has always been braver than he is smart, which is quite saying something because Sherlock's a bona fide genius.

So Sherlock at last got off his knees, he reflexively smoothed down hair that _was_ a bit standing on end, and he stepped toward a cranky god who stood at the edge of the empty about seven hundred feet up from unforgiving pavement, and Sherlock—

* * *

"Oow!"

With an actual act of heroic will John unclenched his fingers. Sherlock grunted in relief. Sherlock continued.

* * *

—and Sherlock took Loki's hand.

Loki was so surprised he nearly fell out the window.

Twining their long fingers tight, Sherlock kept the god safe, standing beside him right on the edge of the black. Sherlock's as afraid of heights as most anyone. He knows how easily bones break, he's watched them in the breaking and, like listening to the bang of a bullet leaving a barrel or hearing a scream cut off, the sound absolutely stops the heart and you can not tell him otherwise.

Yes, the good detective is intimate with the delicacy of human flesh but as a man who spent so long belittling emotions—"Sentiment? Caring?"—because he had entirely too many of them, Sherlock knows far more about the heart.

And how easily that can break.

"You're young as gods go, aren't you? You're just a boy."

Loki closed his eyes and made non-committal noises in the back of his throat.

"That's where the stories come from I bet, the ones ascribing to you so much pain and petulance. They're right about the first, and because you're such an oversharing _nuisance_ it's easy for idiots to make up stories about the second."

Loki grinned despite himself.

"You were born a god, a pampered prince, and so there's still so many things you don't know, no matter how unbreakable you are, no matter how unafraid of the dark."

The wind whipped high as Sherlock's voice went low with reflection, but do not think Loki didn't hear the change.

"Sometimes you need to be in prison to appreciate freedom. Need to starve so you want to eat. And sometimes you need to hate everything, all of it…so you can love."

The god opened his mouth to reply but Sherlock plowed on.

"Sometimes we talk too much, you and I. We want too much, think too much, _know_ too much. Oh but I know you know that, you're a god who reads minds, unlike me you read for real, you know what's in everyone's heart. Except your own, my dear Loki."

Anyone else would call the god's smile at the endearment vanity, but Sherlock knew what that looked like too, and it wasn't this. This was desperation to be seen, a hunger born of the starvation of anonymity. From a time of being second or third or not even on the map. This was famine, bone deep.

Sherlock used to be this same kind of hungry, and he sought to feed it at first with the approbation of other children, then strangers, then colleagues at the Met, _anyone_ who'd notice his genius and if not his genius then his invective, if not that, then his wardrobe, his hair his…something, anything.

And then there was John. John didn't notice, he _knew._ Knew that Sherlock was more than the sum of his abrasive parts. He was a dick, a show-off, and rude, yes, but John knew something no one else did: Sherlock Holmes was also capable of devotion, of passion, of kindness. John knew—that first day—that down at the core of Sherlock was loyalty so great he'd die for those he loved. And so John had been willing to die for him.

Fortunately fate had other plans for both men, but this man, this mischief maker, he stood alone. A frost giant who was not giant, an Asgardian not born of Asgard, Loki belonged nowhere and to no one—and this he never forgot.

_You're who I would have been._

Barring the whole godly grandeur thing, this petulant, lost creature who had so much brilliance but so little wisdom, he was who Sherlock would have been if Sherlock hadn't found a focus, then the work. And then John.

"I know a small giant," Sherlock said.

Loki chuffed out a tired breath. The wind, stronger than any god, more everlasting than immortality, snatched it up and scattered it away. "Yes, I believe we're all aware."

Sherlock ignored the faux indifference. "This small giant long ago taught me something sweet. Something that might help another…small giant."

Aware with whom he had just been compared, pleased beyond the crowing about it, Loki smiled tentatively.

And Sherlock stepped from the edge of the black, tugging the god with him, and then he gathered the tall man close.

And they began to dance.

* * *

Sherlock wasn't sure when he'd finally released the tissue box. He thought maybe it was around the time he got to the bit about emotions or maybe it was—

—it didn't matter. The point was he'd let go of the tissue box somewhere along the line and John was cuddling it to his chest and looking up at Sherlock. Despite what people think Sherlock really _can't_ read minds. Oh yes he can deduce until the cows come home but John's face, blotchy with fever, nose beacon-red, eyes blood-shot and half-mast, was making that a bit difficult. So Sherlock resorted to something old-fashioned.

"Is that all right?"

John grinned up at his one true love. He sniffled. Sniffled again. His grin washed away. Then John shoved his face into Sherlock's crotch. Sherlock squealed.

John snuffled hard once, twice, three times. He nodded, withdrew his face from Sherlock's groin. "Good. I thought I was deaf." Another brief frown. "No, wait. I mean I thought I was broke. That I couldn't smell anything." Here John smiled serenely. "But I can smell you. I can always smell the smell of you."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed and anyone not John would think he was taking umbrage at this talk of smells, but Sherlock was again wondering if John was delirious. He should ask.

He didn't get the chance, because yes, John was a bit deranged, happily doped on Lemsip, sex hormones, and being so lavishly loved he out-awesomed a god. But he was entirely with it enough to answer Sherlock's question. Both of them.

"Yes."

It was Sherlock's turn to frown.

"Yes," John added.

Sherlock had done enough talking—even _he_ thought so—so he held John's eye and waited.

"To both Sherlock, to either. That in this amazing dream you'll do with him what I do with you…[dance away a fractious heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/481967/chapters/871850)? It's fine, it's all fine. Or are you asking if it's okay to think more of me than of an all-powerful deity? For you to want _me_ more than that sort of magic? Of course it's all right, it's fucking fantastic. Sometimes I don't get it. Why me. Why you and me. To look at us, we're so different—"

John lifted a hand, placed a sweaty palm over Sherlock's just-opening mouth. "No, I don't mean you're elegant and tall and beautiful and I'm 'just me.' I finished with that self-deprecating nonsense the first time you looked at me as if I were a hundred and seventy centimetre bag of all-sorts topped with a banoffee pie and tied shut with a locked-room mystery. I wasn't exactly a wilting daisy before but being looked at like that does give a man a certain swagger." John sneezed moistly into his own forearm, then wiped it on the duvet. "Yeah, so I'm sexy. You think so, I think so. No, what I sometimes don't get is how we fit together like we do. We shouldn't. I think we should be all rough edged but instead…"

John started to wipe his nose on his arm again, didn't even notice when Sherlock wrestled the tissue box out of his grip and held a tissue under his nose. Reflexively John blew. "…instead we make magic. You don't _complete_ me or I you, we make each other _more._ We're bigger together, bigger than any god."

Sherlock grinned and he wondered if that's what his subconscious was trying to tell him with this dream that would end all dream (actually there'd be another in the not too distant future, a dream that would actually have one of them thinking about the possible need for some therapy), but frankly Sherlock just didn't really care what his subconscious had to say, he cared about the delicate, strong, perfect creature curled against him, the one that couldn't breathe but could breathe _him,_ the one who was so brave he could love Sherlock without wishing to _keep_ him, the man who encouraged Sherlock to desire, to want, to love…and so taught him that it made him love John more.

Love like this was more valuable than immortality, finer than forever. It made the shortest of lives seem like the longest. Though in the harrying press of day-to-day that knowledge would inevitably dim, in the end it was perhaps the simple message the dream was trying to tell. It would certainly be one Sherlock would never forget.

The other thing Sherlock wouldn't soon forget was in comparison quite incidental, though still memorable.

Sherlock would not forget the moment a god…worshipped him.

_In all long porn stories a little angst must fall. At least two more chapters pending in this my 'thousand word, single-chapter fic'. Ha!_


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lover's fingertip running through the notch at her throat can make a woman wet.
> 
> A gaze sweeping slow from eyes to chest to hip can make a man hard.
> 
> And the delicate press of one human man's fingertips placed soft against his mouth can take a god to his knees.

Desire's fire can be fed by strange fuels.

A lover's fingertip running through the notch at her throat can make a woman wet. A gaze sweeping slow from eyes to chest to hip can make a man hard. And the delicate press of one human man's fingertips placed soft against his mouth can take a god to his knees.

So when Sherlock pressed his long body against Loki's longer one, held him near and strong and close, Loki smiled but he did not _want._

When Sherlock murmured a litany Loki knew had come from a doctor's mouth, a recitation on the magic of _slow,_ of small, of listening to the uptick of a heart, the huff of a breath, of going micro instead of macro, Loki nodded but he did not _care._

When Sherlock moved them with grace across that fire-lit room, doing exactly the things he had entreated of Loki—listening, looking, sensing the small and the sweet—Sherlock realised that what worked for him, what John's wisdom and grace did for _him,_ did not work for this god.

So Sherlock did something that did. He stopped their slow dance. He dropped his voice so that it was soft as whispers—"Shhhh "—and then he barely rested the fingers of his hand against Loki's quiet mouth. And that's when Loki's mind finally stilled. And his body began to shake.

Oh yes, desire can be fed by strange fuels.

Because here's something you may not know about immortals: They're hard to hurt.

As children they run headlong into _everything._ A wall is a test, a rock a temporary obstacle, the very earth something to attack, to mold, to _move._

But the real tests arrive when an Asgardian comes of age. That's when, breathless and eager, an immortal wonders: How far? How long? How hard? How often? If I fall will I break? If I bite, will they bleed? If I push, if they pull, if we kick and scream and bend and _rend…_

This is by way of saying gods are not often gentle. When you frequently call down thunder or span the globe in a blink, you can lose touch with the subtle and the soft.

So when Sherlock ran his fingers slowly down Loki's mouth, opening it just a little while he pressed his own against it, the pressure a whisper, the heat of their breath a delicate storm fluttering lashes, Loki couldn't stand it.

So Loki didn't stand.

Sinking to his knees in front of that fire, he looked up and waited for Sherlock to do it again, and again and again, he waited for him to touch him with tenderness.

So Sherlock did.

Silently he joined the god on his knees. For long moments he watched yellow firelight flicker in Loki's eyes, had seen those eyes burn with their own fierce flame, and knew too that it's not a rare thing for a strong man to welcome being weak.

"We're precisely the same," Sherlock said. "It doesn't matter how invincible the god, how fragile the mortal, we both need to be needed, wanted, and oh so very much to be seen and known and touched."

With a tilt of his head Sherlock pressed his mouth against Loki's, then pushed lightly inside.

The taste of Loki was like his scent: Sweet, rich, tart. He made Sherlock's mouth water.

 _More,_ Loki wished, and so more was what he got. Another stroke of hot tongue squirming wet against his, a careful shifting of lips, and then feathery touches of long fingers against his cheeks, each so barely-there they overwhelmed him.

And when Loki's delightfully overwhelmed, Loki lashes out.

Usually.

But this Asgardian wasn't on his knees with another god, so there could be no fury-as-foreplay no matter how much he might suddenly ache to take or wish for bruises in the taking.

So Loki put his arms behind his back, crossed them at the wrist, and weaved fingers together so tightly he'd tomorrow have the marks he craved.

And then with quiet care he made love in the gentle way gods sometimes can.

He got instead of giving, he held himself back and opened himself up, his mouth and his mind, letting Sherlock in as deep as he cared to go.

_Your kisses are like…rain ashes my dear. Maybe some day I can show you._

Sherlock hmm'ed to show he heard, and he nudged a fine chin higher with the gentle press of lips, slid warm lips softly along Loki's neck. He licked slow, slower, slowest over the pounding pulse there, small flicks of the tongue again and again, feeling each beat come faster than the one before. Then he bit.

Loki jumped, pulled away with a grunt, sat on his heels. "Oh you're shamelessly good at that."

Indeed Sherlock was. He'd learned from a master, after all. Leaning forward, palms flat on the floor, he nuzzled at Loki's throat again and murmured, "What's this about ashes?"

Loki tilted his head to expose more throat, hmmmm'ed awhile as Sherlock sucked softly at indelicate flesh.

"It's…it's…the only translation I can think of…" breathed the god. "Aft-t-ter spring storms on Asgard…" Loki's gaze was riveted by the hypnotic sway of Sherlock's hips from side to side, a small, sinuous motion that made him completely forget what he was saying.

_I've completely forgot what I was saying._

Sherlock kissed his way up neck, jaw, and then whispered the words Loki needed right into his mouth. "Storms and ashes," he said, then kissed leisurely along the other side of Loki's face, down again to his neck.

It took a good five seconds for the immortal man to figure out what the hell that meant and when he did he breathed out in a rush: "Oh yes, right. After the first spring rain on Asgard a-a-a tiny pod opens, lets loose these infinitesimal seeds, as delicate as ash. If you touch them they smudge, disappear, die, so no one touches them. For days we move with care, we stop and let them drift by on unseen currents. Not many survive but enough do, rising eventually on the warm air and eventually they fall into ponds and lakes and something there, some enzyme makes them hard. Then they begin to grow and grow into these wonderful trees that look old even when they're…they're…mmmmm."

Sherlock's tongue tip squirmed into the hollow at the base of Loki's throat and there it lingered, lapping gently as if finding sustenance.

"…and this, your mouth, so delicate so careful so strong…it reminds me of them."

_Show me._

Rare, rare, rare. Loki had never met a mortal as brave as this one. Humans usually fought him on principle. They struggled against his strength, railed against the reading of their minds, and yet at the same time they needed to prove a worth that was already apparent by the fact that a god had come to earth to look at them, to touch and breathe and _know._

Sherlock wasn't like that at all. With that brain of his he'd been so far above almost everyone for so long he probably qualified as a minor deity himself, so he wasn't exactly overcome by a real one. What did it matter that Loki was nearly invincible? He was as weak as a kitten where it mattered—the heart. And why should he care that the god could get inside his head? He couldn't _take_ anything, _do_ anything, all he could do is what Sherlock himself has done since he was old enough to see—all Loki could do was _see._

And so no, Sherlock wasn't perturbed by perceived inequalities, it was all a matter of perspective, and so it was easy for him to stop, sit back on his own heels and think in a deep baritone rumble—because a man can do that if he's a mind— _show me how I remind you._

"Mmmm." There it was again, a sudden hum, an involuntary sound from a delighted god.

Loki fell forward, onto tented fingers, grinned up at Sherlock, then face-planted right between Sherlock's clothed thighs.

A very _unsubtle_ god.

"Loki."

Loki grunted and pushed his face harder against Sherlock's groin.

"Loki."

Another long hum, this one vibrating nicely through hard flesh, but to his credit Sherlock didn't thrust even a little bit.

Look, the man who has a finite life span? The one who will some day grow weak and small and go to dust? Unlike a suddenly-impatient god he loves to take his time with this, relishing the journey as much as the goal so—

"Mmmmm."

The hum was Sherlock's this time and it was followed by a grunt of pleasure and then, damn it, a small push of the hips.

Loki cooed his delight, nosing and humming his way around Sherlock's stiffening nether region. He started chattering then, because that's what Loki does, he tells you what he's feeling. Oh this god of Asgard will _always_ tell you what he's feeling.

"When I was a little boy I would _scent_ things. I was good at finding Thor's last hidden rassis…a sweet that smells of honey and smoke." Loki put the full stop on this datum with a sharp nip at Sherlock's thigh. "I'd sniff out the first summer jakelet, a tiny flower from which we make the most evocative perfumes." Loki rubbed his cheek along Sherlock's erection and hummed again, an actual tune, something vaguely martial.

"Lo—"

"When I got older I could do more than unearth hidden treats, I could scent a mood. Not always, and not when I most wanted to, but sometimes I could and oh you'd be surprised what you learn when you walk in on your parents and their guests and you smell regret or rage or, more interesting still…"

Loki hushed just long enough to lick hard along the entire length of Sherlock's clothed cock. "…want and need."

Here's a fact: Sherlock doesn't actually want to be the only princess in the room. It's a lonely business that, and a bit more than exhausting. Sometimes, just sometimes, you want someone else to pull focus, to dance and sing and entertain. So Sherlock decided to shut the hell up and let Mr. Emo hold the stage he so naturally filled.

"That's how I found you darling," Loki said, biting with a growl at a soft fold of Sherlock's trousers. He tugged with his teeth and giggled, giddy. For awhile that's all he did, bite, nip, nibble, and then he took a deep, deep breath, sat up and gusted the warmth of it over Sherlock's face.

Damned if it didn't raise to painful attention what was already quite hard.

_Pheromones?_

Loki hummed his little military tune in noncommittal answer and licked at Sherlock's nose.

"One day…one day…where was I? Oh yes, I was on Oxford Street—I love Oxford Street because I can find so many of you all bright and busy—and then there _you_ were, brighter than any fire, busier than any bee, and the best part, the very best part? You were _annoyed."_

Loki giggled and did a strange thing, he laid his head on Sherlock's shoulder, breathed soft against his neck. "Those things have a scent, did you know? Do you know what it is? Do you know what being alive and eager and strong smells like?"

Loki's hair tickled Sherlock's nose and the good detective smiled and whispered, "Pomegranates."

The god sat up suddenly, delighted. "Oh _yes."_

Loki seemed to vibrate; alive, eager, strong. "Tell me my very darling, what's it like to be so above everyone else, so bright and beautiful, yet trapped inside that fragile flesh?"

Long fingers trailed across mortal skin. "Because you're nothing like a machine. You're a mating of the strong with the unfeasibly frail, you're something I've never seen before. You're…"

Loki shifted back, bowed low again, let his forehead touch the soft carpet, his arms extend out before him.

"…a god in mortal form."

_Oh shit._

* * *

John didn't say a word, not one damn word.

Sherlock grunted. He closed his eyes and pushed his lips together in the way he does when he's got a raft of something sharp to say and is struggling not to say it.

He hummed a little, maybe something martial, and for a moment it seemed as if he'd plow on, go back to the dream, but he didn't. He sat up straighter and got a firmer hold on that tissue box and he said very softly and very fiercely, "I don't."

He opened his mouth to say that raft of sharp things, to argue against people who were not there arguing. People who would always dislike him because he was smart or beautiful or strong or tall damn it.

But Sherlock didn't speak. He couldn't, not yet, not now. He could only think and let the thoughts prickle his skin hot and chilled both. He could only let his fingers burrow in short, silky hair and wish that John could read his mind, like a god, like—oooooh. _Oh._

"He's _you."_

John rubbed his cheek against Sherlock's hip, said nothing.

"Yes. The god, in the dream, he's you John." Sherlock felt giddy. Everything made sense. The whole damned _saga_ made sense. "His strength, his words, he's—"

"Not me. I know it would be easier for you if he was, but you're a genius, you know he's not."

Sherlock shifted the tissue box. He thought about mashing. He realised the mashing wasn't really helping. It did give him something to do though. He mashed.

No, of course the god wasn't John. That would have been normal. But Sherlock's never normal. He will never _be_ normal.

"No," he whispered, having at last that fight he imagined before, though playing both parts. "I'm not that deluded, I'm not that vain. I don't need worship."

"We do."

Sherlock grunted as if pinched.

"We need it Sherlock, those of us on the outside of that brain of yours. We need to put you on a pedestal, make you more than a man. Maybe it's so some of us can pull you down later I don't know, but I do know that since I met you I've done it, everyone around you does it."

Transfixed, Sherlock stopped mashing his cock with the tissue box.

"Dreams are just how our brains organise information. Tuck things away."

John held out a hand. Sherlock gave him one of the black hole tissues that lined the mattress along his hip like little papery kittens. John daubed.

"You see the comments on my blog. All those strangers saying things. Yeah, sometimes what they say is a bit not good, but there are those other ones, the ones who are like me. They admire and praise and place you on a pedestal."

John snuffled. "Your brain had to put all that information somewhere. So I guess maybe I am Loki, yeah. One little bit of him. And they're other bits. Your brain is gathering us all together, saving room in the mind palace."

Sherlock liked this interpretation very much.

"I like this interpretation very much."

John honked into his tissue. "I thought you would."

Sherlock rarely asks for anyone's input on anything. It's not that he doesn't sometimes value opinions freely given, but he got out of the habit of _asking_ for them when he was eight. It was about then Sherlock learned that asking could be perceived as ignorance and ignorance as weakness. This is the primary reason Sherlock _tells_ witnesses and clients and criminals what they think. They'll correct him if he's wrong—they always do—and if he's right he looks exactly like what he is: A prickly genius.

John is different. John's _always_ different.

Sometimes Sherlock will ask John what tie to wear; he'll ask him what concerto to play on his violin; on tired days, when he's thought just one too many thoughts, he'll even ask John to decide what sort of sex Sherlock needs (John always replies to this enquiry by stretching on top of Sherlock until the pressure and the warmth of his small body simply shuts Sherlock down with a contented sigh).

So it was natural for Sherlock to ask John something he wouldn't ask anyone else: "What do _you_ think?"

John thought he was deaf again. In his nose. As if he were doing it in a very stealthy fashion John inched closer to the tissue box, wedged his nose _under_ the box, took a deep breath.

John couldn't smell the pine-y scent of the tissues in the box, he couldn't smell the laundry soap on their sheets, but by god John could smell Sherlock. The good doctor relaxed, pressed his face to the delicious slightly-sweaty crease at the inside top of Sherlock's thigh, and maybe he dozed (for twenty minutes). He woke up talking.

"…and I think I'm catching."

Sherlock paused in his efforts to smooth out and perfectly reinsert the fifty-three tissues he had so far removed from the box. "Yes," was all he said.

John randomly took one of Sherlock's crumply-smoothed tissues. This had the effect of discombobulating the fifty-two other tissues. As if this was a completely sane way for the two of them to treat tissues, Sherlock's response was to start balling tissues up again and John's response was to shove one up his left nostril to staunch the mucus flow.

"No, not contagious," John said, though the entire short sentence sounded as if all his Ns had become Ds. "Dreams," he clarified. Unclearly.

Yet Sherlock got it, of course he did. Because it's a well-known fact in their small family that John's the detailed dreamer. He can tell you the eye-colour of their pet unicorn, the humidity level in their love cave, the date stamp on the post speared to the mantle in that love cave. Sherlock almost always dreams of nothing much but, like so many things about Sherlock, when he decides to give something a go he damn well _goes._ Apparently it was the same with his subconscious.

"But you know, as much as I'm a little bit in love with the Shard right now, and probably am going to want to do filthy things with horns pretty soon, I hope for your sake you don't have another dream like this. I'll take care of those from here, okay?"

John will shoot bad cabbies for Sherlock. He'll smooth the ruffled feathers of a world that doesn't know how to deal with Sherlock. And, apparently, for Sherlock, John'll even take over the burden of dreaming really intense dreams. As if that were possible.

"John, I'm not sure that's possible."

John took a deep breath beneath the tissue box, under which he was still happily wedged, then rolled over onto his back. Instantly his entire brain felt as if it were surrounded by, and floating in, mucus. With a pugnacious frown at the ceiling John said, "I'll _make_ it possible."

John once glued a tiny Yuan dynasty vase together—a vase Sherlock had accidentally broke into three pieces during their not-strictly-legal entry into the Victoria & Albert museum one very late night—so perfectly that the break was not noticed until seven weeks after its purchase by a bored billionaire and even then it was only discovered because the billionaire's toddler had broken the vase in three _different_ spots when she tried to flush the little thing down the loo.

With nothing more than a head tilt, a smile, and a murmured "Shhh," John's halted the voluminous sobbing of a set of triplets, he fixed a neighbour's espresso machine despite having never touched one, and he once made ice cream with a bucket, a plastic bag, and some annoyance.

After reflecting briefly on each of these thing Sherlock nodded. Yes, yes if it were possible to take over someone else's dreaming responsibility John Watson would be the person capable of doing it.

"So," John gurgled, shoving a tissue up his other nostril, "What happened after Loki bowed to you?"

Sherlock's cheeks pinked. He found he needed a security blanket. He shifted the tissue box a little bit to the right. To make room.

As if it were a scent-seeking missile, John's entire face found its way planted right back in Sherlock's groin.

Everyone settled on down.

Sherlock continued.

* * *

"Who do gods worship, Sherlock?"

Just a man, a mortal quite mere, Sherlock couldn't say. Yet he could imagine. The gods people make are always so _human,_ differing only in order of magnitude. They're stronger maybe, perhaps they live forever, but without exception they're as emotional as any man, as fraught with fears as any woman.

"Gods worship those in whom they see themselves."

Loki sat up, crowing in delight. "Yes! Exactly that. You, my consulting darling, are so tender and small and finite yet look at you—you never _act_ as if you are." Loki cupped Sherlock's jaw. "You stand as straight-backed as my mother, chin as high as my father, and the smile in your eyes, the shifting sharpness…oh honey you look so very much like me."

As if it were the next step in a well-known dance they rose to their knees and this time no one led, no one followed, they met in the middle, in a kiss.

It was slow and sweet, something Sherlock often is with John. It was soft and gentle, something Loki rarely is with anyone.

Except ashes.

Loki blew.

At first Sherlock thought it was an exhale, the hot breath of the kiss, but it wasn't. Loki was blowing softly across Sherlock's mouth, sharp, sweet little puffs…and then he laughed.

 _That's what we do._ Loki pulled back, pursed his lips, blew gently at Sherlock's mouth, then against his neck, into his ear, laughing again when goosebumps marshaled along Sherlock's jaw.

_This is how we help the ashes. We make it a game, who can get their ash to the river. We race to see…_

"…who can plant their seed first."

Loki giggled again, low, throaty and giddy, pressed his hands against his own substantial erection. "Yes, Sherlock."

 _Who do you think it'll be,_ the young god thought. _Will it be me, sowing myself inside you?_

The lust-drunk deity nibbled at Sherlock ear, "Or will it be you taking root inside me?"

Sherlock's not particularly poetic, doesn't have the gift or inclination for innuendo, but he's not immune to either, especially when the words insinuate at the intimate, at the delectable basics of rutting and coming and—

"Ouch!"

Biting.

 _So sorry my sweet,_ Loki purred and removed his teeth from succulent flesh almost as pale as his own, _you make me forget that you're not a god._

* * *

Sherlock skewed a glance sideways and down.

Nestled in a congested little ball beside Sherlock's lap, John was smiling, eyes closed. At the extended pause he squinted one dark orb open. Grunted.

Sherlock nodded once.

* * *

No, Sherlock doesn't need worshipping, but he can be as sensitive to flattery on the score of his charms as any needy god. And so he listened, and was flattered.

"You make me want," Loki said, insinuating a long arm around Sherlock's waist, "want to bite you, to taste you, to have you and be had." Loki laughed again and it sounded a little deranged.

"It's so nice to want something." Loki laughed, "I want to throw you across the room—in the sexy, delicious way—and I can't. And wanting to do it and not being able to do it is divine, my love. It's like holding your breath for as long as you can and then when you at last breathe it's like poetry, it's like coming."

More giggling, because Loki was nothing if not more than a little mad. "Well maybe not, it's a different kind of pleasure but it is pleasure isn't it?" Before Sherlock could answer Loki begged. "Hold my breath for me, Sherlock. Then make me breathe."

Loki swept up Sherlock's big hands. He turned them palm up and stared at them. He was taller than Sherlock, yes, but his build was more wiry, his hands narrower, more delicate. Even people who notice little else about Sherlock almost always notice those big, big hands.

Loki lifted both of them, kissed the palms slowly. He rubbed his cheeks, his nose, his face against them, and then Loki sat back on his heels and he put Sherlock's hands around his own throat, then placed his own over them.

"Take," he said breathlessly, "oh take my breath away."

_If these two had an every day life together they'd hardly ever have sex. I think they'd damn well talk one another half to death before anyone got a leg over. More on its way!_


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock doesn't get off on force, or domination, or pushing past John's boundaries. But that night on the rooftop of 221B?
> 
> Well, that night Sherlock learned he gets off when John pushes himself.
> 
> Using Sherlock's body.

_* A bit of breathplay ahead*_

As strong as he is despite his slenderness, as vicious as he can be when provoked, Sherlock Holmes isn't a rough man.

Oh yes, he can be all sorts of butch when taken over by his _let's burn stuff!_ jones, he can feign a certain devil-may-care macho when John wants that sort of titillation, but Sherlock's always favoured his brains over his brawn. In short, Sherlock is not turned on by force.

However…

Sherlock is emphatically turned on by force of _will._

He learned this a summer midnight his and John's first year together. A night when they were on the roof of 221B and John bared his body and he had wanted and _wanted_ so much he trembled with it. He tugged and clutched at Sherlock before Sherlock could more than halfway take down trousers and pants, he'd arched up and pulled down and so Sherlock had given as hard as he knew how, knowing that afterward John's back would be scratched raw by the press of rough roof tiles and Sherlock's weight on him. And yet he did and _did_ because John begged fierce and he so much loved that slightly-bloody evidence after that Sherlock never felt regret, only pride that he'd _pleased_ John.

So no, Sherlock doesn't get off on force, or domination, or pushing past John's boundaries, but that night Sherlock learned he gets off when John pushes himself _using Sherlock's body._

So Sherlock held his breath the harder Loki pressed Sherlock's hands against his own throat, he moaned the louder Loki moaned, and without struggle he gave in to being forced to _force._

And oh Loki was drunk with it. He murmured something in another language, his tongue thick, the words slurred, not at all struggling against the pain of Sherlock's thumbs digging hard at his windpipe.

Not unless struggling looks like eyes-closed bliss, like a chin lifted high the better to bare so much pale skin, not unless struggling sounds like a dark keening, a babble that even in another tongue Sherlock understood was pleading.

And again the god was laughing—he never stopped really, this creature of mischief—as if Sherlock were digging fingers into ribs and belly, not the tender flesh of his throat.

Loki's a strong man, an _immortal_ man. Deprive him of breath and he'll yet live, but Loki does feel pain. As if to verify this debatable fact, he pressed harder against Sherlock's hands and started to choke and gag and _laugh harder,_ and probably he'd have gone on and on and so strangely on except there was…there was…

…pained grunting…

…hurt groaning…

…and…

_"Oh."_

Eyes flying open, cough-choke-gasping, Loki let go.

Sherlock stumbled away, rubbed one wounded and deep-bruised hand with the other. And, no longer held fast, Loki went to hands and knees.

Head hanging between his shoulders the god retched as his abused throat convulsed and though he wanted to laugh he couldn't. What he _could_ do was cough hollow, hoarse, low, and crawl to Sherlock's legs, pressing his body against them, a great cat wanting-needing the feel of the trembling hand reaching down to stroke.

"Oh I love you."

* * *

Sherlock stopped breathing.

For a moment John continued wheezing open-mouthed at Sherlock's groin. He was probably a little bit drooling in the slightly unattractive way of the mucus ill, but no one seemed to notice or care. The spit just further slicked a hard-on that for the last hour had been gently beading its own bit of slick. But that's beside the point. The point was that soon after Sherlock stopped, John jerked upright (the tissue box that had been half resting on his head flew into the air and nearly tipped off the bed).

Listing woozily John barked, "Inhale!"

Because John's seen Sherlock do this before, just a very few times over the years. Holding his breath—his rarest tell for fear.

"Now!"

Sherlock stuttered jagged on an inhale, exhaled just as shakily, then blinked and nodded. He started to say, "I'm sorr—" but never finished because John clapped a sweaty hand over his mouth.

The good doctor growled, a tissue sticking out of each nostril not at all reducing his bad arse mother fucker-type vibe.

"Why?"

Why? _Why?_

Oh this was too much. No, seriously, Sherlock usually gets where John's going with this sort of thing: No shame, no regret, no denying true feelings blah blah blah, but this? This was ridiculous. Surely he should be _jealous,_ annoyed—

"I asked _why?"_

John knuckled a tissue more deeply into his nostril with one hand, realised he still had the other clapped over Sherlock's mouth. He removed it.

The only way to get the words out was to shove them out, so Sherlock did. "Because I don't want to…to…I don't want to hurt you."

John's scowl softened, his shoulders drooped, and weighed down by the solidity of the mucus occupying his entire braincase, John tipped over until he was back in Sherlock's lap. He sighed and then sighed again and to soothe himself he shoved his clogged nose against Sherlock's cock and breathed deep. The heady scent did indeed soothe, and so eventually John tut-tutted, said softly, "I know you don't sweetheart. I'm sorry. I know it seems as if stuff like this should be wrong, but that's not right. What we do is wrong or right, that's all. You've never lied to me—"

Sherlock opened his mouth because that was the mission he'd given himself about ten seconds ago, speak because John asked you to, Sherlock Holmes, and John asks for so very, very little.

"Actually I—"

John, slightly grumpy again, batted at the air. "I don't mean fibs about bat feces in the butter dish, or the fact that it was you who drained a dozen raw eggs and put the unbroken shells back in the fridge—I mean I didn't exactly suspect ninjas on that one Sherlock—what I mean is you've never _lied_ to me and I don't care about anything else. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else. You could shag a dozen ponies—"

John stopped, backed up quickly, took another tack. "—you can love who you love or be loved, I don't care so long as you're happy. No, I mean I do care, because you make _me_ happy, but Sherlock, I just…you're…" John realised higher brain function was at this point beyond him so he took a deep, deep breath and whispered, "Please, don't be sorry."

Sherlock curled himself down around John's hair-mussed head. He wrapped that head in long arms and kissed a fever-moist brow. He said "I love you," so softly against the shell of a perfect ear, and then he said, softer still and as if crooning endearments. "Hand me the tissue box."

John did.

Sherlock sat up, box cupped in one hand, John's chin in the other, and he continued.

* * *

Loki didn't wait for an answer because he's sorta crazy yes, but not a fool. He was grateful that Sherlock didn't say anything back because if he'd been kind and parroted the words, that kindness would have been a lie and if he'd actually loved Loki…

…well that love would be completely mad.

Loki's gently unhinged and he _likes_ it that way. Yet he knows that if he'd found Sherlock before Sherlock found John, they not only would have loved each other, they'd have eaten each other alive.

It would not have been sane what they would have wanted from one another, it would not have been sustainable or healthy or right.

It would have been nova-bright and it would have burned them both. The immortal would have survived those flames, but the mortal? Oh he would have been nothing but tinder turned to ash.

This Sherlock was better, this one's spine was fortified with Watson iron, this one's heart was stout with the certainty of love. This Sherlock was strong where it mattered and weak where it did the most good. This Sherlock might not love him like the other would have, but this one would survive him and that was even better.

Loki stropped Sherlock's legs with his lean body, a tail-less cat quite-near purring with every touch of the long-fingered hand that reached down to him and stroked.

"My brother's afraid of hurting me," the god said hoarsely, apropos of everything. "So of course that's all I want him to do."

It'd be a long, long time—even in time as measured by gods—before Loki and Thor would reach an understanding that gave them both what they needed, but they would reach it. In the meantime the fine-boned immortal would seek diversion by way of his own body's destruction, and his gentle-hearted brother would mourn this fact.

But now was for _now,_ and now was for the sinuous strop of a mad god against a mad man's legs, for wondering what would happen next, for delighting in the fact that he didn't know.

And then he did.

Stilling for a few long and quiet seconds against long legs, eyes closed, Loki giggled when he felt Sherlock jump.

"How many of me could you pleasure, do you think?" A voice like Loki's voice whispered. "How many of me could you take?"

Loki looked up to see his own body standing behind Sherlock, arms crossed over the detective's suddenly panting chest. Loki idly wondered if he should make another clone, but had an even better idea than that.

"Or maybe," said the god's clone, giggling just like the god, "Maybe something else again."

The hands clasped over Sherlock's heart grew larger, the sleeves encasing his arms the dark of a fine suit, and the voice a deep and measured baritone.

"No," whispered Sherlock, as Sherlock stepped from behind him with a grin.

"What do I fear? Myself?" asked the Loki clone now turned Sherlock clone. "But Sherlock loves Sherlock; that is, I am I."

* * *

"Mother fucking fuck."

Sherlock closed his eyes and clutched the tissue box against his chest with one hand, held tight to the man in his lap with the other.

Again the good doctor whispered reverently, "Mother fucking fuck."

No one said much for awhile, then John said matter-of-factly, "You didn't even really _watch_ the movie Sherlock. I mean you did, but you flounced so much, you groused and melodramatically banged your head against the wall and otherwise were such a grade A royal git that I ended up having to watch the whole thing again after you finally passed out in my lap. _How_ you absorbed so much I will never know. _And_ you're quoting Shakespeare. You didn't even see that play with me that time and—"

Realising he'd completely wandered from the question he wanted to ask, John finally said, "Are you going to have sex with yourself Sherlock? Or, you know, a half dozen Lokis? I ask because I may need a decongestant first since I'm already a little bit hyperventilating. I mean I don't know if there's a limit on how many of those clones he can make. You could end up riding a battalion."

John clutched hard at his still-erect security blanket. The owner of that blanket winced.

"Sorry, sorry. I got really turned on just then." To stop himself from thinking about Sherlock perching himself on a veritable chorus line of cock, John reached for a tissue from the box. In reflex Sherlock clutched the box harder. What ensued was a few seconds of struggle as each over-aroused man tried to lay claim to the tissue box.

Finally Sherlock shook his head and realised what he was doing. He stopped hyperventilating and handed John a tissue with a whispered, "I'm sorry."

John took the tissue, shoved it up his nostril next to the one already there, took another, shoved it up the other. He then belatedly removed the old tissues which entailed reseating the new ones. After this moist comedy of errors he said, "The only reason I'm not currently begging Mrs. Hudson to give me my gun back so I can put myself out of my own mucus misery is this dream. Okay? Do you get it? This. Is. The. Best. Thing. Ever."

John petted his security blanket. His security blanket swelled a little bit, then coyly beaded a bit more pre-come to show its thanks.

"I love you," whispered Sherlock.

"I lo—" began John, then he sneezed both tissues out of his nose, and sprayed spit all over Sherlock's cock.

John Watson's husband tut-tutted. He swabbed everything everywhere with a fresh tissue. He tossed all used items onto the floor. He handed John two more tissues.

After everyone was well-situated again, John said, "—ove you. So. Are you, uh, going to literally go fuck yourself?"

John's giggle was only a very little bit deranged.

Sherlock smiled. Then he said, "Since you ask…"

_I've been writing a great deal of not!porn for[the book](http://wendycfries.com/post/128280390239/ordering-the-day-they-met-the-day-they-met-is) and I'm serious, I can't even tell you how restful it was to write the word cock again. I don't think there's going to be as big a gap between this and the next chapter… P.S. Much and many thanks to Black Morgan who came up with the multiple Loki's idea. Thank you dear Pirate!_


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock sneered at the Sherlock glamour and just like that it turned into Loki turned into John turned into that pretty actor Sherlock side-eyes when he sees him on TV, turned into a younger Loki turned into Molly turned into Thor turned into empty air.
> 
> Empty air everywhere. Then Sherlock turned around, and there they were.
> 
> Lokis. Lokis everywhere.

"No."

As regards sex and John and new things, Sherlock has tried to keep that one small word out of his lexicon. It's _in_ his lexicon, yes, but he makes an effort to think before using it.

He did not think about it this time.

Because Sherlock's got lines in the sand, an exceeding few, but as regards Sherlock fucking Sherlock, well surprisingly [he's been here before,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/708313/chapters/1308465) and he got away from 'here' as soon as he was able.

"No," Sherlock enunciated the word for Loki, or himself, or whatever it was that was standing six feet and one half inches tall in front of him, with a steady cloud-gaze, smiling a smile not the least subtle. "This," Sherlock said, pronouncing each word as if teaching a foreigner his native tongue, "is not how I roll."

Then Sherlock sneered at the Sherlock glamour and just like that it turned into Loki turned into John turned into that pretty actor Sherlock side-eyes when he sees him on TV, turned into a younger Loki turned into Molly turned into Thor turned into empty air.

Empty air everywhere.

Loki-Sherlock-Molly-That-Actor-John-Young-Loki was gone.

Sherlock turned around. And then there they were.

Lokis, _everywhere._

"And…"

"…not…"

"…a…"

"…drop…"

"…to…"

"…drink."

Six identical gods giggled at Sherlock.

John moaned.

* * *

The good doctor opened his eyes and murmured, by way of explanation, "A chorus line of cock," then closed his eyes again to better visualise this visual.

Sherlock continued.

* * *

"Darling Sherlock."

"Can you tell?"

"Which one of us is us?"

"Without touching."

"Can you?"

"Oh Sherlock… _would you?"_

Sherlock opened his mouth to pant a little easier. He pressed a hand upon his heart. And Sherlock was, as always, surprised at the sheer number of things to which he is not immune. It used to be so easy to roll his eyes at the sexual predilections of others when he himself had none—because he had no one.

Yet now?

Holy mother of god, Sherlock was now—as everywhere else—absurdly lavish with his loves. He didn't have one thing, two things, a half dozen things that got him breathing heavy, he had a damned legion. Added fresh to that long list? Listening to a man infinitely stronger than he…beg.

Yet not for long. With identical grins the gods, all six, began circling him, each moving as independently as a real man, three dressed identically to _one_ man. Sherlock.

Those Lokis laughed.

"A suit suits us. Don't you think?"

"Of course you'd pick black. Then again, so would I."

"But a blue shirt with the black? How very _you."_

As if the one thought led to a very obvious other, the suited Lokis drifted a hand to their neck, to the bruises Sherlock's hands had left there. As soon as long fingers pressed into that tender flesh, the other Lokis moaned.

Then five illusions and one real man went still and, puppets suddenly put aside by a bored puppetmaster, each draped himself boneless on chair or sofa or floor.

Every last one looked at Sherlock and grinned that toothy, impossible grin.

"Deduce…"

"…me…"

"…pretty…"

"…man…"

"…oh…"

"…please…"

"…please…"

_"…find…"_

"…me."

If there's perfection to be found on this earth, Sherlock'll tell you it comes from _this:_ Having brain and senses singing, needing to _see._

So Sherlock saw.

Before one insouciant creature draped across a plush chair, the good detective bowed at the waist and peered close. "Tender smile lines, tiny hairs curling against his ears." Sherlock made a twiddly finger gesture. "I can even count his pretty eyelashes."

Sherlock grinned, moved to the next Loki, who was slumped on the sofa, long legs promiscuously wide. Sherlock clasped his hands behind his back, danced his gaze half-interestedly over the suit-clad creature, turned away.

He did the same thing with the third. At the fourth he lifted a hand as if he'd touch, pretended to remember he wasn't allowed. Then he gestured to the glamour's throat, "You've even remembered the loose thread on my collar button." A shrug and again Sherlock moved on.

By this time one of the Lokis had got up to stare moodily out the vast glass window. Sherlock stood beside the boot- and leather-clad god, frown-stared as if stymied. Then, when the window fogged in front of the doppelganger, Sherlock grinned at the creature's reflection in the mirror-like glass.

"Ah, there it is. You at last remembered to give him _breath."_

Sherlock turned and looked at the Loki stretched out long by the fire, propped on his elbows and watching. Sherlock slipped off his suit jacket, held it out to the glamour behind him, knowing there was no substance there to _take_ it. He let it fall.

Walking toward the fire, unbuttoning his shirt, Sherlock ignored the fading of each glamour, until he was standing in front of the booted feet of the only Loki left.

Sherlock shrugged off his shirt and went to hands and knees, eye to eye with the now-heavy breathing god. "I knew who was who from the start. Do you want to know how?"

Sherlock's got rare eyes. Even the fools who look at his face and pronounce it 'funny,' see that.

For the longest time those unusual eyes saw mostly darkness: breaks, blood, the aftermath of brutality. It was John who taught Sherlock to see light. Hairs rising along a bare belly in the wake of a languorous touch, caramel sauce dripping sensual-slow down melting ice cream. John opened Sherlock's eyes. Then John did more.

He taught Sherlock the beauty of _scent_ by giddily shoving his face everywhere on Sherlock that smelled good.

Sometimes that meant a nose against Sherlock's lips, huffing soft as John took in caramel-scented breath.

Other times it meant nuzzling right behind Sherlock's ear, where the scent of fresh-washed or sweat-damp hair held equal allure.

Though of course the very best scent is was and ever shall be between Sherlock's legs because, face it, that's where semen and spit and lube mix in a heady, seductive mess. And, since we're facing things, seeing those long legs open wide in invitation _afterward,_ asking wordlessly for John to press his face close, to get wet with the wetness of them—as often as not it left them both moaning.

All of this by way of explaining how Sherlock Holmes deduced himself a god and not a glamour.

"I _smelled_ you."

Sherlock being Sherlock, he showed Loki in the most melodramatic fashion possible. He shoved his face right where Loki smelled _divine._

The sound the god made bore no resemblance to anything human. No the sound was of another animal entirely, and that one was _starving._

Sherlock fed him.

He slid hands up to Loki's waist and pressed forehead and nose and _teeth_ against Loki's clothed cock and he said, "Give me, give me, give me."

Then Sherlock set about giving _himself,_ and started undoing Loki's clothes.

Well.

_Well._

At the beginning of this epic dream Loki'd had on his entire fancy outfit. All leather straps and gauntlets and gold. Then he'd switched to little more than a curved-horn helm and a tunic. Then, when he'd magicked up his small Loki army, he'd gone and got all layered up again.

So, despite Sherlock being all _give me, give me, give me_ and Loki being all growly, and everyone so over-aroused they were dizzy, Sherlock was struggling to get through the god's damned _gear._

And then there it was! A belt clasp undone. Then a second clasp freed from a second belt. Then there was the leather undercoat beneath the leather overcoat and that undid at the side and—

At this point Sherlock was sitting back on Loki's thighs, brows drawn, tongue shoved out the side of his mouth.

—and there! Now the undercoat was free and—

There was another layer under that layer.

"Good god, how much costuming—"

"—battle dress—"

"—does one man need?"

"As much as it takes my love."

The god then laid down, stretched out, and clear as a shout and without so much as a sigh thought: _Come on darling, let's get this pants party started._

* * *

They were kind of like pterodactyl noises. At first Sherlock thought John was in pain, that maybe he was choking or coughing or—oh _hell_ no.

Sherlock stamped one long, bare foot on the mattress. The bed shook. "John Watson it. is. not. _funny."_

The good doctor clutched his stomach. He gagged on the next shrieky little noise struggling to fly out his mouth. He had to bite both lips to even marginally gain control. "Oh god. Oh god. Oh god."

John head-butted Sherlock's hip, bit into his husband's dressing gown hoping-praying a mouthful of cloth would cut off his hysteria. After a few exceedingly long seconds of praying-hoping it was good. It was all good.

"No. No. It's not funny. I'm not laughing Sherlock. I'm not."

Sherlock waited until John stilled. Until John _shut it._ Then Sherlock sniffed. He made tiny motions as if he would get out of the bed. John knew he wasn't going to get out of bed. Sherlock knew John knew he wasn't going to get out of bed. Propriety demanded, however, that both pretend they knew nothing of the sort, so John slid a fever-warm arm round Sherlock's waist and Sherlock fell back against the bedhead.

"Stay sweetie. Please. Tell me more. _Please?"_ John congested pitifully, dabbed at his tissue-stuffed nose with a tiny little black hole tissue. "I won't laugh again."

Sherlock sniffed in reply, and appeared to think about this.

John took one more step in their give-and-take dance. "I won't say anything more. I won't laugh. It's a compliment really, I'm merely applauding the glory that is your magnificent imagination. For a man who usually dreams about leaves falling from a tree, you've had the most arousing, detailed dream I have ever heard of _ever."_ John got a far-away look. "If I had dreams like this I would knock myself unconscious at six every night and will myself to sleep for twelve hours."

Sherlock's furrowed brow furrowed more.

"No! Uh, I didn't mean that, I'm…I just…I…" John pressed a greater expanse of fevered flesh against Sherlock, shivered dramatically. "…I don't feel very well."

Still furrowing in a very clear _you're not fooling me_ way, Sherlock pressed the back of his hand to John's forehead, nodded, and went on with his dream.

* * *

Right. Well. _Finally_ Sherlock pulled up the soft under-layer to all that supple leather and exposed Loki's trousers. And stopped again.

"Emeralds? Really?"

Emerald buttons held Loki's trousers closed. Really.

The god sighed and tapped his toe.

Sherlock quickly pushed one button free, then two, then on the third he paused again because there was genital hair visible, as was the top of, um…

Breath ramping up prettily, Sherlock casually pushed another gem free, then the fifth and final. As if defusing a sexy little bomb, he delicately spread open Loki's leather trousers.

"Y-you're wet," Sherlock stammered pedantically, unable to look away from a certain spot that was oozing a pearly sort of…ooze.

_Gods need lubrication too, my love._

Sherlock shook his head. That wasn't the point. What was the point? Oh, right the point was…look, not everything can be deduced. You can get the big things, vanity and loneliness and so on, but the devil's often in the details and sometimes, well, sometimes you just have to ask because you really want to know.

Sherlock gestured south.

Loki propped himself up on his elbows again, and together they looked down at a beautifully curved cock. Both of them licked their lips hungrily and even in the dream Sherlock knew that that was kind of strange on Loki's part.

Then again…

"We all do it."

Sherlock blushed, sure that Loki knew he'd suddenly just been imagining the god kind of tonguing himself and—

"Go without pants."

 _Oh._ Sherlock stopped thinking about Loki bent over and—

"Visible panty lines are a bitch, especially under tight leather."

* * *

"John Hamish Watson-Holmes stop your damned _giggling."_

John tried. Failed. Tried again. Failed. Tried once more, with feeling. Succeeded. Unfortunately that meant he could now _speak,_ even though he was also kind of wheezing. "Oh my god this is the best dream since best dreams. I kind of want to hump your brain right now. Oh god. Oh god. I love you. I love this. I might be dead before you finish telling it, but know I'll have died happy."

John curled even more tightly against Sherlock, wheezed up at him happily. "So. No panties on our superbeing. Excellent. Then what?"

Sherlock tilted his head. Scowled. Stayed silent. Waited.

"Please my love? Pretty please my precious, my only, my darling?"

Mollified for the moment, Sherlock continued.

* * *

"Thor started it really, the whole no-pants thing, and it just spread like wildfire through our little godly group. Even Heimdall does it."

Sherlock wasn't listening, he was still staring at the pretty thing framed by the spread of Loki's trousers.

"I can if you like."

It looked…human. It looked firm and fragile and warm. And also—

"What now?"

Loki took a moment to slowly and rather theatrically lick his lips. "You were imagining me…"

The god cupped his own balls. Being as Sherlock was a bit sitting on them, this, and Loki's implication that he would happily suck himself off should Sherlock so desire, caused an interesting phenomenon by which the good detective, hard for the last little forever, got even harder.

Sherlock placed a demure hand over his bulge. "This can't be safe."

_That's your dear John talking._

Again Sherlock wasn't listening to the babbling—and then he was listening super-fast-extra-special-hard. "What now?"

_I said—_

"I heard what you said and you can _unsay_ it."

Now you'd think the god of mischief would be mischievous and tease Sherlock further, but Loki, like the genius currently partially sitting on his cock, was no fool. If he wanted to play, and he emphatically did, it would not do to irk his preferred play thing.

_Unsay…what? The last thing we were talking about was whether you'd like to watch while I suck my cock._

Sherlock was sharply aroused but he was not mollified.

"I'm not mollified," he said. "You're saying a name you need not say. You can't say…you can't…"

* * *

Sherlock fell silent, watched himself pluck three tissues from the box, stack them one on the other and carefully shred them.

He tore the trio into eighths, thought about going further, instead he gathered the pieces into a ball, then handed the ball to John all without actually looking at him.

The good doctor took the proffered mass and said softly, "Oh my prim and proper little love."

Sherlock frowned at the tissue box and then he didn't, he bit his lips and then he didn't, was about to pluck up three more tissues but didn't because John took the box from his lap, rose and straddled him.

Taking a deep, snuffly breath and careful hold of his true love's bowed head, John said, "Sometimes I think a Victorian heart beats beneath that fine breast." He lifted Sherlock's chin. "You have an old-fashioned way about you sometimes, and feel guilty for good things."

John dabbed at his nose with the Great Tissue. "I'm not actually in this dream, am I?"

Sherlock's gaze shifted here-there-everywhere. "Not as such, no."

John sighed, slid back to the bed in a fevery little puddle. "Good, I can just enjoy the show then." John dabbed. "Go on. I believe you were telling that pretty little pretty boy what for."

Sherlock placed a palm on John's forehead. _So much good here. So much heart._ Sherlock resolved right there and then to believe John Watson-Holmes' version of good because it was the only one that mattered. Whatever John believed was right, that's what Sherlock would believe.

With a lighter heart and a significantly heavier dick, Sherlock smiled and said, "As you wish."

* * *

All right, at last Sherlock shoved acres of tunic and coat and undercoat and loose belting and who knew what else out of the way, then carefully removed Loki's boots and trousers. Finally there was unearthed beneath him actual flesh. _Acres_ of it. Yet as Sherlock pattered his fingers over Loki's faintly blue belly and hip, he frowned.

Sherlock's seen hundreds of bared bodies, both living and dead, but he's intimately _touched_ only two: His own, and John's.

John's body is as dichotomous as he is. He's hard at shoulder, calf, thigh and in the beginning of their relationship Sherlock would sometimes while away long minutes just watching the hypnotic shift of tendons and muscle in these places as the good doctor moved above him or beneath him.

Ah, but then there's John's bum and belly, the sweet places that Sherlock lingers longest after they've loved or rutted or fucked, relishing the softness, wondering at but never really questioning the sense that in these places Sherlock's home.

Loki's body was different

Though beautiful, it was heart-breaking too, the body not of something powerful but of a creature half-formed.

_My people are Giants._

Sherlock ran his hands up Loki's lean torso, down a long leg.

_I think my body tried to grow as big as they, but in the end there wasn't enough of me. Not enough skin and muscle and fat to grace my long bones…and so I'm half-made. Bigger than most Asgardians, smaller than the Giants, I'm too much and too little both._

"John…" Sherlock murmured, incapable of not saying the name he'd so recently forbidden Loki from saying, "…taught me the beauty in rarity."

Then finally, at last, and thank be to any and all gods present or absent or running around somewhere without knickers, Sherlock got his mouth on Loki's cock and started to suck.

Loki of Asgard went still and silent as the grave.

Sherlock didn't. No, Sherlock chattered teeth over tender blue-blushed flesh, grunted chattery noises of pleasure, then he settled on down to the business of blowing a god.

First he lapped at the slit of Loki's cock. Sherlock loves that, the feel of John's tongue slowly tonguing him there. It zings pleasure from cock tip to balls and makes the good detective grunt. If John keeps at it, delicate pokes at that tiny opening, Sherlock will grunt deeper and start to shake. He'll feel pre-come welling, his body a willing accomplice, feeding John.

So Sherlock lapped and in imagined sympathy began to shake, started to grunt, but Loki did neither.

All right then, something else.

Sherlock licked his palm and wrapped his fingers around Loki's prick, sighing at its warmth, then he took Loki into his mouth.

 _Now_ Loki moaned.

Encouraged, Sherlock started to suck and slowly stroke, his entire body rocking with the motion. He loves that too, when John sucks and _squirms._ Sometimes Sherlock'll push a leg between John's and feel his sweetheart's hard-on hanging heavy and—Sherlock giggled now, giggles then—and _drooling_. It's a round-rosie of arousal, John turned on by Sherlock's writhing and noise, Sherlock turned on by John's drip-drip-dripping and here Loki was again like Sherlock. He insinuated a bare leg between Sherlock's cloth-covered legs and—

—suddenly, just like that Sherlock's trousers were gone. So were his pants, his socks, and his shoes.

Sherlock took this moment of Loki's pleased-with-himself distraction to 1) clamp his thighs around the god's insinuating leg, and 2) swipe a finger through the spit dripping down the god's perineum then sliding that finger into Loki's arse.

Suddenly Loki of Asgard became a noisy, fun-house ride.

He arched his back and thrashed his head, he put the foot of his free leg on Sherlock's shoulder to push him away, but clutched Sherlock's hair to keep him in place. He bucked and thrust down onto that finger and up into Sherlock's mouth and Loki grunted as if oh-dear-god-finally he was being fed.

In a way he was. Because Loki doesn't get a whole lot of sex, you see. The people who know him just _won't_ anymore because Loki's a little bit crazy and a lot fragile and no one wants the responsibility of his desperation or his need. His brother wants to but won't for whatever reason Asgardian kings-in-waiting have for denying themselves the things they desire. And though Loki could get a legion of mortals to fuck him, of course he could, anyone past the age of twenty—and Loki's thousands of years beyond that—knows the familiar emptiness of a stranger's perfunctory fuck.

Which is to say it's been a long time since Loki got anything blood-warm up his arse, longer still since the being wrapped around that blood knew what he or she was doing and to whom.

So Loki wriggled and squirmed and wrapped an arm under his own knee, drawing his leg to his chest, which pushed Sherlock's finger deeper, which made Loki thrash more, which caused Sherlock to insinuate a second finger inside and hump harder against the leg trapped between his thighs, and at this point if anyone got more turned on someone was going to require hospital care.

Sherlock stopped rutting. He let Loki's cock slide out of his mouth and pressed his forehead to the god's belly. And Sherlock stilled the fingers slid deep inside the god.

When they were both done hyperventilating Sherlock, with gentle touches, encouraged Loki to place the sole of his other foot on his shoulder. And then Sherlock started breathing heavy again because Loki's body was wide open like that, Loki was clenching around his fingers like that, and—

* * *

_"I'm going to have sex with him now!"_

John jumped a mother-fucking mile.

He choked on his own mucus, clutched his thumping heart, and almost fell off the bed so wildly did he full body heave in shock at Sherlock's guilty shouting.

When, after a year, he was sure he wasn't going to have a heart attack or choke Sherlock to death, John reseated tissues back up his nose, wriggled and squirmed until he was between Sherlock's legs, head against his chest, fevered back against Sherlock's cock, and John tugged the duvet to his chin, took hold of his own leaking security blanket, and said in peeved gratitude, "Jesus fucking god it's about time."

* * *

_Oh let me, let me, let me please._

Mesmerised by Loki's squirming on his fingers, Sherlock didn't at first hear the words in his head. Then he did and, because this was his own head, his own dream, Sherlock understood what Loki was asking.

_Please please please let me see through your eyes._

Sherlock didn't think twice. He smiled his permission and absolutely nothing changed. For him.

But he knew Loki could see what he saw now because now Loki was thrusting down harder and faster and moaning. Sherlock let him look for a long time, as much a voyeur as the god, because bodies in motion are beautiful, especially when giving-taking-giving pleasure.

Long minutes later, when Loki again pulled away in preparation to once more drive those fingers deep, Sherlock took his hand away, took hold of his own erection, and he placed the tip against Loki's arse. And had a thinky thought.

Now, that thinky thought was meant to, Sherlock didn't know, materialise a tube of lube beside them, or in his palm, or _something._ What Sherlock hadn't thought to think was…was…

_Lord have mercy on a poor detective's heart._

…to have the lube appear _inside_ the god and then kinda sorta dribble thick in blood-warm invitation from Loki's arse.

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," Sherlock panted blasphemous, quickly placing Loki's thighs over his shoulders, lowering himself onto his elbows, then sliding his cock in deep.

As before, Loki keened and writhed, he used the leverage of his legs to ride hard. He arched his neck and keened louder when Sherlock pressed kisses on the bruises there. Then he slid a leg free and wrapped it around Sherlock's waist, encouraging him to _pound_ instead of thrust, and when Sherlock did Loki groaned, then moaned, then…then…then…

…fell silent.

Sherlock looked up, hips stuttering still, eyes going wide.

Loki's mouth was sewn shut.

It's an old bit of Norse legend that, an angry god taming Loki's troublesome tongue by stitching his mouth closed.

"But…but…"

Loki opened his eyes. _I'll scream,_ he said-thought-apologised. _If I don't do this, I'll shout the roof down._

Sherlock sighed, lipped at Loki's stitches, then whispered, "So shout."

At the feel of Loki's lips parting, of his tongue squirming inside his mouth, they both started moving again.

It didn't take long after that, if by not long one means an infinite time of slow thrusts of tongue and cock, of pleasure teased out until pleasure nearly hurt, and then of a mortal quite mere, thrust-thrust-thrusting, groaning, stilling…and coming.

Loki bore down, _clenched_ around him, drove nails into Sherlock's back, then went still too, counting—yes counting—each pulse of Sherlock's cock, imagining he could feel himself filling with the warm wet, listening to his lover's pleas and sighs, crooning endearments and encouragement against Sherlock's open mouth. Finally, a long time later, when he felt the last of everything shiver through Sherlock's body, Loki whispered a pretty plea: "Please, _please_ show me."

Sherlock kissed Loki's throat, eyes, mouth, pant-giggling warm breath over Loki's face. Then he gently unwound Loki's leg from his waist and placed it over his shoulder, wrapped Loki's arms around his neck, raised himself slowly on pleasure-weak limbs, then Sherlock looked down—and he let Loki see.

See for real, instead of through Sherlock's eyes, see where they joined, see Sherlock's still-heavy cock slick-sliding deep, see the _wetness_ down there, and it was enough, more than enough. Body gone Jotun—eyes red, flesh ice-blue—Loki rocked to meet each thrust, then, head falling back, the giddy god shout-shout-shouted his lover's name and came.

_Bloody buggering hell I don't think I've breathed properly for the last forty minutes. Right. Well. There was a lot of emo with the porn because that's how these two roll, but know this: They. Are. Not. Done. Sexing. Yet. Oh hell no._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki ran the tip of one finger over the blade that was now warmed to blood heat. He wondered if he could tell the precise temperature of the metal if he tried. Was Sherlock's blood hotter than his?
> 
> There was a way to find out...

Sherlock watched Loki come.

Anyone who's given thought to the matter—and many have, based on hundreds of comments on that fan site John and Sherlock each think the other doesn't know about—think Sherlock must always watch.

Sherlock doesn't.

For seeing and observing is not, ironically, reserved only for eyes. Sherlock sees with each inch of his skin, sees with fingers running over a half-hidden book spine, reading the hot-stamped words with the whorls. He observes with ears pricked to find a barely-there susurration behind a locked door. Sherlock is Sherlock with nose and tongue, with the hairs on his arm, the heat of blood against receptive flesh.

So when Sherlock loves John he sometimes closes eyes that have grown tired of all the things they can see. Instead Sherlock sees John's pleasure with a palm stroked down a sweat-slick back, with temple to chest capturing the thud-thud of John's heart in the cup of his ear. Sherlock sniffs at the musk under John's arms, tastes damp eyelashes, he feels with his skin the hum of a body sated.

Only long after, when John is dozy with contentment or keen to get his sweetheart off does Sherlock open his eyes and watch. Though there are still a hundred tiny tells he could sense with tongue or nose, afterward is when Sherlock wants most to see. How John's teeth drive into his lip is different depending on whether he's sleepy or suddenly-insistent. His gaze is dreamy both ways, but with one there's the blur of oblivion, with the other there's the sharpness of _plans._ John is often a book Sherlock can't read, one of his many gifts, so after Sherlock's wanted John and had him, Sherlock likes to see the way John wants him back, for the story of that wanting is rewritten again and again.

This by lyrical way of saying that Sherlock doesn't precisely _observe_ when he makes love but this time, well this time Sherlock did. When Loki came and came…Sherlock studied and saw, he noted and noticed, oh yes.

And these are the things Sherlock learned.

Gods arch into orgasm the same as humans. Even though Sherlock was holding Loki tight, helping him bend that lithe body so he could look between them, well even then a god's back goes tense-muscle ridged, then bows with pleasure.

Though Loki, a warrior god who battles even in pleasure, struggled to unbow that back, open pleasure-closed eyes, and as he _came_ he looked between his legs, past his cock, down, down to where Sherlock's body entered his.

Because Loki is hungry.

Starved for closeness, for sweat that doesn't come from fighting, for pleasure that's not part of winning. Loki looked and saw and observed and for many long years hence he would need to remember their bodies like this, bare and close and joined by want. Beyond the fucking and the coming—yesohyes more of that please—there was this: Their bodies united, together. Because here's the reality of Lokis: He may be able to move a man with his words, with his arrogance, but even he can't make a man want him and show the proof of that want like this, Sherlock still hard inside him, Sherlock driving in deep because he wants him.

So Loki keened and came and fought against the physical manifestations of pleasure so that instead he could see and sup deep at the more lasting pleasure of _looking,_ of making memories that will last him a human lifetime.

"Ah, ah, ah…" he panted deep-voice husky, coming a good deal longer than a mortal man might, but really, what's the point of being a god if there aren't _some_ benefits?

When Loki's flesh went pale blue Sherlock knew the intensity was fading and languor was stealing over long limbs, so he unwound Loki's body from his and sweet sweet sweet, as if he were putting down a babe, Sherlock lay the god back onto the soft carpet and stretched out beside him, the fire crackling warm not too far away.

* * *

There in a germ-infested bedroom on a street called Baker, Sherlock grew quiet, pensive. Full of sighs. He even stopped manhandling the tissue box.

"Oh _hell_ no."

Sherlock jumped.

"That can't be it."

Sherlock blinked.

"If that's where it ends—"

John started to blow his nose as if to make his point. He did not have a tissue in his hand. Sherlock quickly inserted one.

"What I mean…I just need some warning. Before. Before that. Before you're…you know…done."

Sherlock opened his mouth but did not get the boon of replying.

"I am not even partway joking Sherlock. I need, like, twenty minutes of notice so that I can deal with my heart rate and my cock and my grief."

It had taken an hour and a half and an awful lot of interruptions but Sherlock at last realised John was entirely more invested in his dream than perhaps was healthy. However, Sherlock understands committing a little too much to a thing, whether that thing is cataloguing one hundred and forty kinds of tobacco ash by smoking one hundred and forty kinds of cigarette and cigar, or seeing how long a man can resist coming in his husband's arse when provoked extensively by that husband's moans and creative hand work (answer: not nearly so long as he swore he could).

So sure, yes, Sherlock completely gets the idée fixe, but he was now wondering if the rest of his dream could possibly—

"I don't care."

Sherlock looked at John, John sort of a little bit tried to sit up but seeing as he felt like shit he quickly deemed it not worth the effort. He collapsed onto his pillow.

"I don't actually care how this ends I just need to know it's coming. Pardon the pun. As fucking awesome dreams go it's already surpassed anything I could possibly hope for, I already have enough wanking material to last me the rest of the decade and probably on through to retirement and so even if this concludes with you and the pretty boy snuggling on a sofa and putting bows in one another's hair I will be content. I just need for this to not end in any way remotely suddenly."

John shudder-sighed, scootched down into the blankets again, reapplied himself to Sherlock's hip.

Sherlock, unlike John, knew the entire rest of the dream. The good doctor did not need to worry.

"John, you do not need to worry."

It took a long second for John to hear the words through his congestion and then through his fever and when he did he began to giggle.

Sherlock nodded, stroked John's temple, reseated his tissue box, and began talking.

* * *

This being a dream and therefore a place in which all things are possible, Sherlock cuddled close to Loki on that carpet, closed his eyes, and started to dream. And because even _in_ his dreams Sherlock is still fundamentally Sherlock, in this dream-within-a-dream he was aware of dreaming and so was trying to remember the name of that _other_ awful movie John had made him watch, the one with dreams in dreams and 'three layers deep' and John had got so stroppy with Sherlock's complaints that he'd actually taken the DVD out of the player, picked up his laptop and left the room with both.

* * *

"Wait, wait, wait. First, I did not _make_ you watch anything. I stopped doing that three days after I moved in when you told me how _The Sixth Sense_ ends. What happened is that you jammed your mighty arse between my hip and the sofa arm and made _yourself_ watch _Inception,_ and now that we've cleared that up are you dreaming in your dream about a movie about dreams?"

Sherlock opened his eyes. He was surprised they'd been closed. Then he frowned down at John, as if this absurd left turn of his own sub-conscious was his husband's fault. He said nothing.

John shoved a twist of tissue into his left nostril and said, "It's not _my_ brain and by the way I also didn't make you follow me into the loo and sit on the floor next to me for the last twenty minutes of the movie if you were thinking of claiming that and Jesus Christ I think I have really pretty high fever and by now a deep breath would bruise something internally so for the love of god would you just shut up about _Inception_ and tell me what happened next?"

* * *

The moment Sherlock stopped dreaming inside his dream and woke, Loki stutter-sighed and opened his eyes.

They were red.

For awhile the god blinked at the mortal, the mortal gazed at the god, and then Sherlock said, knowing it was true: "They hurt."

People rarely seem to realise magic has a price. With a small wave of a hand a sorcerer glamours himself, carrying on what mother used to do for him, turning blue, scarred skin white and smooth, turning blood-coloured eyes pale.

Yet magic costs, it always does. A fortress must be fortified, so each and every day that he lives Loki shores up his foundation, hiding one colour behind another so that he can continue to live in a realm not his, and every day Loki pays for that with a little bit of pain.

"Yes," Loki whispers. "They don't much like being blue."

Sherlock ran his fingertips over skin that was again Caucasian pale. "Why do you do this? You're a prince, a god, a sorcerer. Isn't that enough? Won't your people accept you in your true form?"

"Like your people accept you?"

Sherlock opened his mouth, then closed it. He'd been about to say _one does,_ but Sherlock didn't. Even at his worst—and his worst had been dreadful—Sherlock knew when his words would further break the broken, so Sherlock said something else.

"For so long I spit and hissed even in reply to kindness, and so is it any wonder people stopped being kind?"

Though pliable and warm where his legs and arms tangled with Sherlock's, blue flushed hectic along Loki's cheeks, then down his neck and chest. He hissed, "Why do you think we do that Sherlock? Because _they started it."_

"Tell me about these 'they,' Loki. Were they children? Very young? Even gods must start out as simple as a mortal, as unformed and unlearned. Is that when you began to armour up, put on your 'battle gear'? My shields became my tongue and my ridiculous face, both are nimble, changeable, and with both I learned to hurt first and never ask questions later, but the problem is I got lazy, then lazier still. I told John a long time ago that I'm the laziest man who ever stood in shoe leather and this is the crowning proof of that. I didn't change, even after the child I was and the children around me grew up. They changed, I didn't."

When a chattery man does not chatter back you've either touched his heart or lost him. Loki? Sherlock had _completely_ lost him.

"You're not getting it. The armour was patch-work, old, _it was outdated_ Loki. I was maintaining walls to keep out something that wasn't there any more. No, no, that's wrong. Cruelty is always there but so is kindness and it's less rare than you think."

It could have been lovely for the next little while. If Sherlock had stopped talking. If Loki hadn't replied. Yet it's been said, by the men themselves, that they are as likely to shut it as the moon is to dance a jig with the sun.

So Loki answered Sherlock, in detail.

Shifting on the plush carpet, eyes still red, skin still blue, an alien who'd stopped trying to hide his otherness, Loki said, "I'm not immortal you know. You didn't, did you? I'll live for thousands of years, yes, I'm kind of indestructible to certain things, but to other things? To other things I'm as frail as a kitten, as delicate as rain ash.

"Sometimes I think a word unfitly spoken could do it. If my brother ever decides…" Loki's gaze went distant, and then he shook the solemnity from his face and grinned, "…you could cut my throat, that would do me in, too," he said brightly, and quite suddenly resting across his flat belly was a curved dagger. He delicately ran his fingers over the blade, arched his back a little. "With this pretty thing maybe? It was my mother's."

The cadence of Loki's voice changed, as if he were repeating nursery rhymes. "Everyone thought Frigga was gentle, everyone thought Frigga was kind, but what mother was was _old._ She was tired of death, that's why she wanted peace, so she could just rest awhile. But her blade…"

Loki placed Sherlock hand on his belly, over the knife, then pressed both of his own over that. "Can you feel it? Remnant of the woman she was long ago: a warrior covered in alien blood. Oh the number of my people she slaughtered. She was merciless and proud to be so. A curved blade is not kind, Sherlock. A straight blade can be well-guided, with a straight blade you can limit the damage you do if you know what you're doing, even in the middle of a war. But a curved blade? Every bit of the damage done depends on the twisting of the wrist, of the body into whom the blade is plunged. If the creature stuck on the end of _that_ struggles, oh god the damage done by such an edge, it's butchery."

Loki grinned, baring pretty teeth. "And this was my mother's weapon. Kind Frigga. Gentle Frigga. A blade well-kept but oft-used, old and so beautiful. She gave it to me in what feels like a long time ago though I'm not so old yet, as you so correctly deduce.

"When mother gave me the knife she said one single word."

Loki drifted a hand to Sherlock's wrist, held him there as if Sherlock had been about to pull away. With the other hand he splayed Sherlock's fingers, so that they touched both metal and blue skin. As he did these things his breathing deepened, grew faster.

"What did she say Sherlock? You are the master of deduction yes? You read minds without being a mind reader. Tell me what the gentle goddess said to her godling, to the blue spoils of war her husband brought home one day. What, what, what did she say to me, still nearly a boy, as she placed her knife in my hand?"

Sherlock doesn't have half so much self-worth invested in being right as he used to. Being wrong and still being accepted—in other words, being with John—had long since blunted that particular hurt. That said, he usually finds much pleasure in puzzling things out. Though once in a very while he'd rather not. Because some things you don't want to know.

"If," said Sherlock, and then said nothing else.

Loki suddenly scrambled on top of his lover's body, pressed a hot slash of kisses across Sherlock's throat. "If, if, if…oh, wouldn't that have been lovely if she'd only said if?" Loki paused, looked at Sherlock, so close that he appeared cross-eyed. "Mmmm, no, no 'if' is no better than what she did say, maybe if is worse. There's too much ambiguity in if, an implied lack of choice."

Loki kissed Sherlock throat again, opened mouthed kisses slow, hungry. Then he placed the flat of the curved blade against Sherlock's throat.

* * *

There's a difference between a heart pounding from arousal and one pounding from panic and Sherlock knows the difference. He looked down at John, who frowned thunderous up at him. "Duddyertyou?"

They've been together awhile. John has had the flu every single year of that while. So Sherlock can parse _does he hurt you?_ from a snotty mumble quite well, thank you for asking, and he can feel himself cherished, knowing that if Loki _had_ hurt him in his dream John Watson would have figured out some way to get in there and kick the skinny deity's arse.

"No, he doesn't."

The cadence of John's thrumming heart changed. John nodded. Sherlock continued.

* * *

Loki ran the tip of one finger over the blade that was now warmed to blood heat. He wondered if he could tell the precise temperature of the metal if he tried. Was Sherlock's blood hotter than his?

"Mother didn't say if, beautiful one, no. Mother said 'when.' Here is my blade dear son, for _when_ you needed to stop. _When_ you just can't any more. When, not if, when, not if." Loki was breathing fast again, kissing the flat of the blade and Sherlock's skin and both at the same time. "Ooooh such a rational woman my mother-not-mother. I bet the Giant who birthed me was never so brutal or so wise."

Loki pulled back again. "Mother was thousands of years old before she died Sherlock. Thousands and thousands. You?" Loki giggled and it sounded positively _delighted._ "You're not even a half dozen decades! Do you think you could possibly know more than a goddess who lived nearly half a dozen _millennia?"_

Loki sat up suddenly, rutted carelessly on Sherlock's hips, but no one was paying attention to erections now. Loki watched the long blade rock unsteadily on Sherlock's throat, imagined it was his own, went so far as to lift his chin and bare his neck. "If I asked you, if I did, if I did asked you…oh Sherlock would you?"

Suddenly Loki closed his eyes, screwed up his face, held his breath.

Sherlock watched the pulse pounding double time in that long, thin throat and then closed his eyes so that he could find the answer. There were two he could give. There was the one Loki wanted. More than he wanted Sherlock's body, his companionship, even his understanding, Loki wanted Sherlock to say yes and mean it. And then there was the answer everyone else would want, the one everyone not _them_ would say was right.

Instead Sherlock gave Loki the answer that was true.

He touched the god's unmarked neck, ran gentle fingers across it from left to right and said, "I don't know."

People fear Loki, the god, the mind-reader, the mischief maker. They want him, the pretty man with the flowing hair, the leathers and cheekbones, the wicked-willing smile. People wish to best Loki…can you hurt a god in body, in soul? He's a hero, a villain, he is a challenge or a disappointment, but the one thing Loki rarely is is _enough._  

"I don't know," Loki said, his voice pitched like Sherlock's, the cadence, the low rumble, the _truth_ the very same.

Suddenly and with a sigh Loki went boneless on top of Sherlock, content. And then by way of saying thank you he said this. "Did you know, my beautiful man, that I can glamour you, too?"

Then, without any fanfare, Loki turned Sherlock Holmes into John Watson.

* * *

_You said I wasn't in the dream._

John didn't say that because _Sherlock_ hadn't said that. Forever ago John had asked if he made an appearance in Loki's little love nest in the sky and Sherlock had said, 'not as such, no.' Stuffed to his hairline with mucus, so hot-cold-sweaty-feverish he was intermittently having out of body experiences, even so, even then, John had been aware of the qualification in what Sherlock had said.

_Not as such, no._

So John didn't say anything about that. What John said was, "Is this transformation into me a momentary thing or is this going to go on awhile?"

Sherlock handed John at tissue just because. Then he said, "Define 'awhile.'"

That was answer enough.

Now John had a decision to make.

He made it.

He couldn't go on this way. John's skin felt sore, his hair ached, his teeth had gone hollow, and he hadn't taken a good, deep breath in maybe one hundred years. And though John knows you can't feel high blood pressure, as a horny man with the flu listening to most erotic story he'd ever heard, he will tell you that's bullshit.

Before any of this continued John needed some medication. That medication was going to be an orgasm.

"Could you hold this for a minute?" John held out the unused tissue Sherlock had just handed him. Sherlock took the tissue.

John took a deep breath through his mouth, flipped onto his back, and kicked the duvet down to his thighs.

"I…" mumbled John, knowing full well Sherlock would understand all the fiddly bits he didn't say.

As John closed his eyes, slid a hand down his belly, and settled in to fiddle his bits, he felt Sherlock scootch down beside him. He knew what was coming: Sherlock was going to help him come by moaning softly against his neck, by gently tugging at John's thigh until it felt like he was wide, wide open.

John began to wank slow and easy and with his mouth wide open so that he'd get enough oxygen to survive the experience.

Sherlock exhaled softly in John's ear, the sigh was wanton if sighs can be, and it shot sweet, sweet adrenaline through John's poor, sick frame and suddenly nothing hurt.

"Ah…" John sighed back. "Ah," he said again. Then when Sherlock's sighing turned into the barest, lightest, _highest_ little keening sound, as if watching John masturbate was going to make _Sherlock_ come, well John giggled gleeful.

Why he hadn't done this a hundred years ago he didn't know, but now that he was doing it his extremities were numb, he was light-headed, and everything was kind of tingling. It felt _wonderful._

Then something fantastic happened.

Sherlock, who had already come at least twice in his dream, who had woke _from_ his dream not only hard again but dripping with sweat and come and pheromones, well he reeked of sex. Though there was one place that scent was most intense.

"Yes," hissed John when Sherlock stroked his big hand down John's forehead, nose, then settled it against his cheek and slid a thumb inside John's mouth. Right now John wouldn't have been able to smell a skunk on his pillow but on Sherlock's hand—the one Sherlock had just run between his own legs—John smelled smelled smelled _Sherlock._

And now John smelled _of_ Sherlock, marked with the heady dark musk of him.

"F-f-fantastic, oh, fan—fan—"

John moaned, arched off the bed, and ejaculated so strongly he got Sherlock in the eye, but only because Sherlock was already curling down, mouth—and eyes apparently—wide open.

Sherlock whimpered. Sometimes he does. Sometimes it's the only thing he can do because his body, brain, his entire _being_ is focused on this one thing, on the gratification of John's body, of the release of it, of the absurd good fortune of being part of it, causing it, lapping it up, taking it into his own body and you know what? Sherlock doesn't need to come, not at these moments, moments when everything narrows down and all the input he receives every day fades to insignificance and he's _lucky lucky lucky_ to be here and with John and there is nothing else.

Long, long minutes later after the giggling, and the lapping up from belly and hand and chest, after the sudden sneeze that sent tissues out the nose and right across the room, after the relieved sighing and more giggling, yes well after all that came the deep, deep breathing.

Then, shhhhh, hush, quiet now…they both fell asleep, cuddled snug, safe and warm together. And for two lovely, restful hours—

"OH JESUS FUCK!"

John startled awake as if stabbed in the arse with a stick. Instantly swearing, sweating, completely confused as to why he—

"Oh," he sighed, as beside him Sherlock clutched his own chest and tried counting the beats of a heart going triple time.

John turned over—one could actually hear the slosh of the mucus if one listened close—placed a hand over Sherlock's crabbed hand, and said, "I'm sorry sweetheart. I'm…breathe Sherlock, breathe baby, you have to—"

It took ten minutes for everyone to calm the hell down. During this time Sherlock breathed. John pulled the duvet up to their chins. The tissue box was located and then wedged between their bodies. John stuffed more tissues into his nostrils, and then he stroked his husband's hip and at last he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout. I was…over-invested. It's okay. That was…that was the best dream ever Sherlock. Thank you."

John didn't say, but the two vertical lines between his eyebrows did was: _It's okay if you fell asleep and forgot everything. You'd have to, wouldn't you? As it is I don't understand how you remembered everything anyway but it's all right. It's fine. Everything's fine._

Everything was quiet for a long awhile.

Wait. Stop there. _Think_ about that.

There's rarely silence in 221B. If Sherlock's not talking, he's thinking, and if you think a thinking Sherlock is quiet you have never been around Sherlock when he thinks. Even when he's stretched out still on the sofa, fingers steepled beneath his chin, there are inquisitive grunts as he turns thoughts over in his mind, there are exclamations of revelation that quickly subside into more thinking grunts.

And during these times John's usually trying to read but he can't find his medical journals or the paper or he unearths medical journals from three months previous and he starts yelling, "I knew you hid them, I just knew you hid them you pillock!" and when everyone finally settles down you'd think things would turn mostly quiet but half the time Sherlock has an inspiration that fills him with the sudden need to _burn_ something and he rises from the couch like a silk-clad fairy and flutters about the place and John gets so distracted by the fluttering and then the smell of smoke that he can't read or—

—or other times, stretched out prone on the sofa Sherlock watches John reading and he has an entirely different inspiration and rolls slowly, falling cat-like to the floor and he stealthily crawls over to John and stretches out on the floor under their desk, shoving his unfairy-like feet between John's thighs and while his toes do unnatural, wonderful things, Sherlock goes about the slow business of moaning and masturbating and somehow or other they both end up coming and so yes, absolutely yes, there is very rarely silence in 221B.

So the one now was a little surprising for its existence and its length. And then:

"I didn't forget John. There's more."

Those two little lines appeared between John's brows again. "You said this was going to take awhile?"

"No. I asked you to define 'awhile.'"

"How much longer will it take you to tell the rest of it?"

Sherlock blinked his way through a couple of answers, then made the only one that was true. "Awhile."

John took a deep breath. He had a decision to make.

He made it.

He got out of bed.

He padded naked to the loo. He used the loo for its intended purposes, which included emptying an entire packet of Lemsip straight into his mouth.

John then reentered the bedroom and left the bedroom.

Sherlock followed.

In the kitchen John dragged a dining table chair over to the cabinet left of the sink and reached for one of the tins on top. From this tin he withdrew cinder toffee.

Sherlock's mouth fell open.

John had managed to hide sweets from him. And lie to him. Because just yesterday Sherlock had said, "Do we have any sweets, I wants sweets John, get me some," and John had said, "No we don't plus get some yourself you big twit."

Anyway, John stepped down from the chair with the package of _chocolate dipped_ cinder toffee and padded back into the bedroom.

Sherlock 1) closed his mouth 2) ran after John before he somehow managed to eat all the sweets.

Approximately two minutes later they were lying side-by-side, littered with toffee crumbs, smeared with chocolate, and apropos of everything Sherlock said, "This is better."

What those three words also said was: _This is_ _better than a locked-room mystery, better than puzzles, better than a horny god who wants me if even such a thing did exist. Being known and knowing, being loved and loving, trying to figure out if I've really got on your last nerve this time or you're still kind of joking, all the ordinary things we have are the most extraordinary things I've ever known._

John hummed. After a bit he pushed Sherlock's lengthy thumb out of his mouth, and whispered, "Yes."

Sherlock gave John another chocolaty finger.

"I'm going to make love to you in the dream now. Me. The you that is me. Or you. It's confusing."

John tucked himself close and tight. "Tell me."

_Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I believe I told you there were some[extenuating circumstance](http://wendycfries.com/post/128280390239/ordering-the-day-they-met-the-day-they-met-is) lately. This chapter is for BlackMorgan, [who wrote a beautiful 221B based on this story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3895891). Please read and tell her what you think. If you leave only one comment today let it be on her wonderful wee tale. Trust me that it's important. Thank you._


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All dreams end.
> 
> If you are Sherlock Holmes, in bed with John Watson, that's a very good thing.

Sherlock's eyes were closed. Didn't matter.

Sherlock _felt_ his body change. Which was ridiculous because Sherlock's body was still six foot and one half inch tall. His hands were still so large that sometimes John gets a little bit turned on watching his husband pat his own chest after a good burp. Sherlock was still curly-headed, cat-eyed, a plump-arsed beauty yes, but that's not what Sherlock _felt_ like.

Stretched out there underneath a suddenly-giggling god, eyes closed, teeth driving into his bottom lip, Sherlock felt his chest broaden, his legs shorten, he felt a small, delicious plumpness at his waist and giggling too, Sherlock blinked his eyes open, looked at his now-short-fingered hands. He wiggled them and touched them and held his own hand and it was…what was it?

It was John-not-John, it was a glamour of skin-and-bone overlaying his skin-and-bone, it was the fine-sweet trickery of a laughing god.

To this man of science and fact, it was magic.

Sherlock looked at his hands both, front, back, veins and wrists, nails and pale blond hair. He laughed and laughing still kissed each finger and fingertip, then with John's-not-John's steady, sturdy, perfect fingers he touched Loki's mouth soft, saying something the god did not expect.

“Oh Loki, they tell such tales of you.”

The god stopped laughing, grunted in surprise. Sherlock did too, for his voice, his accent, his cadence was now in John's higher tenor. Reflexively Sherlock hummed and laughed and then whispered in a voice more familiar to him than his own, "You're the second strongest man I've ever known."

Loki didn't need to ask who was the first.

"You have beauty, power, position, longevity, and yet you shout and rage that it's not enough. You scream it from rooftops, howl it through the nine realms. You bitch and complain and beg and take…and you give and give _and give."_

Loki's eyes went wide. Sherlock knew the look, he recognises when a man is desperately pleased to be praised.

And so Sherlock Holmes, wearing the body of John Watson, did what John Watson would do.

Sherlock stretched underneath the god, arched and grinned and then took hold of the god's face with two unshakeable hands. "That's the part they never see, the blind they, the judgmental they, the boring they. They love too much the melodramatic god so they fail to see from where his drama comes. Instead they spin stories of the naughtiness but don't see beneath it the need." Sherlock took hold of Loki's chin, brought the god's mouth to his own, kissed him soft. "What a fine man you'll be when you grow up."

It doesn't take much for things to change. Perhaps humans and gods both have a vested interest in believing in the catalyst of wars or rooftop declarations. Because those things are rare for most and without them it's easy to excuse yourself from change.

Yet change does not take much, it really doesn't. Simple words at a calm moment. A touch and a gaze and a "tell me," when somehow you are for the first time ready to tell.

Lives change when they will, if we let them and bombs need not apply—except for the small ones made of words.

So it was that Loki Laufeyson's life changed right then, ju—

*

"Jesus Christ you remembered his surname."

Mouth half open on a word, Sherlock blinked at John.

"It took you nearly two years to get Mr. Chatterjee's Christian name right and you're the one who wrote him the cheque for all that lettuce we ruined."

Sherlock closed his mouth. John breathed wheezily through his.

"Right. Sorry. Go on."

*

—st the smallest bit, just a little. Right there, stretched out over Sherlock Holmes, this god burdened with glorious purpose took a vital first step toward that purpose.

He moved one inch to the spiritual left, away from the endless mire of breast-beating melodrama and one tiny inch toward the good and necessary thing he would be: The legendary God of Mischief.

As represented by one Asgardian fond of green leather and really big horns, that tiny inch toward the future was here-and-now represented by _joy._ Joy in the giving, in the _watching,_ in seeing the wonder in the eyes of a man magicked.

Loki lifted his hand and suddenly Sherlock stood alone, stood straight-backed and still before the broad and tall expanse of night-black glass. It was as good as a mirror that glass, and later Sherlock would think that was a god's doing, how well he could see everything on John's body-not-body. Yet it wasn't.

It's just that Sherlock knows John's skin, every inch.

And so standing there and looking at the dark reflection Sherlock's mind inside the god-created glamour of John, well Sherlock looked at his short, sandy-haired reflection and wondered why he'd never thought of this, why some part of his obsessive subconscious hadn't ever entertained itself with thoughts of what it would be like to _be_ John.

Well it was now.

Sherlock looked long into the darkness—both of deep blue eyes and deep blue sky. And suddenly he wanted to be down there in the darkness of the city, seeing it with John's eyes.

He wanted to roam London on John's legs, understanding how this new gravity changed everything. He wanted to run, touch, smell. And maybe Loki would even allow that, softened as he was with sex, indulgent with the pleasure of—

—they were in a shadowy mews in Soho, the papered over windows of a shut-tight club in front of him, and Loki so close he covered Sherlock with his shadow.

"The dirty little heart of London, with its drunken passions and its lurid come-ons," murmured the god. "Yet I do rather like it here."

Sherlock's gaze slid slow over Loki, dressed again in all his pretty costuming. Of course a man who favoured gilded green leather and gauntlets, one who wore horns the size of a man's arm, well of course such a creature would like spangle-bright Soho.

 _I bet no one looks twice here,_ thought Sherlock, and when Loki shook his head Sherlock rolled his eyes at his own idiocy. _No, they look, of course they do._ He ran one of Loki's long locks through glamour-short fingers. _Who wouldn't look at you, pretty prince? And who wouldn't want what they saw?_

"Looking like a movie star in your pretty battle gear, maybe they think you're cosplaying a superhero…"

*

Sherlock glanced at John to see if John would say something about Sherlock knowing the word cosplay.

John was busy changing out his nostril tissues and, at the pause, looked up and shrugged. "As far as this dream is concerned I think I'm officially done being surprised. If that's all right."

Sherlock shrugged and handed John more tissues he didn't need. It was fine by him.

He continued.

*

Tugging Loki close by his chin, Sherlock breathed into his mouth. "Or, better yet, maybe they think you're a stripper in one of the clubs."

Loki grinned gleeful, flooded Sherlock's mind with images of his lithe body straddling a stripper pole. Because of course Loki's done that. Bared his body and moved sinuous for a crowd. He's let them look close, so close, then let them touch a little, a bit more, then a lot. He has took and been taken under flood lights, sweat dripping into his eyes, body shaking. Oh he's done everything has Loki. Every. Little. Thing.

"I love you Sherlock Holmes," he breathed back. "I didn't know how restful it could be, being known." Loki leaned down and the hocus pocus of the glamour meant Sherlock was looking, up, up, up, as the god kissed him.

Sherlock's not possessive (particularly). He's not jealous (usually). So when Loki kissed John-not-John's mouth…

…Sherlock let him.

It felt different, though the second most observant man in the world couldn't have told you how. Maybe it had to do with being bigger and smaller both. Loki was tall, but so slim compared to Sherlock's sturdy, glamoured body. Hands sliding gentle along the god's back, he felt protective and protected both and wasn't that just John H. Watson all over?

So captivating was the contrast Sherlock might be there still, standing on tip-toe and attempting to comprehend kisses, except close by a glass bottle smashed and every muscle in Sherlock's John-not-John body went tense, alert, shot through with delicious adrenaline.

Because apparently even a glamour of John turns toward danger and no sooner had Sherlock done so than he stopped with a grunt.

Oh…oh… _oh._ Moving. It felt so gloriously _strange._

Sherlock took another stilted step.

John's body is dense. Easy living has seen to some softening, but beneath that is the heaviness of muscle and so John weighs more than a man his size usually does. Now, moving inside that gravity, Sherlock was enchanted. The earth felt present beneath him, in a way it never does when he's _him._

When Sherlock walks he does so quickly, tread light by long habit. When John walks he tramps, taking up more room than a five foot six and three quarter inch man can.

Sherlock shrugged shoulders across which a loose shirt draped, tensed jeans-clad legs, bounced on booted toes.

He laughed, delighted.

Then Sherlock ran.

Off like a shot and past pubs, theatres, takeaways and cafes. He ran through puddles black with Soho soot, dashed around crowd-stalled cabs, squeezed through pavement-milling throngs. He pumped his arms just because, took deep, chest-broadening breathes, laughed again, hearing John's laugh and the sound of it was ballast and buoyancy both.

He jumped up kerbs and kept running, jumped down them and nearly tripped and that, oh _that_ was brilliant, amazing, fantastic (he was even _thinking_ like John), because instead of falling Sherlock pin-wheeled his arms and unlike when he's him, all long limbs whose very flailing length just about assures the rest of the tumble, no no, instead of _that_ his short body, solid and small and closer, yes, closer to the ground, well it _didn't_ trip.

So Sherlock ran some more.

Through splashes of neon light—it felt different, did it feel different, did even _light_ fall on this skin more sweetly?— around the crowds that are never not everywhere in titillating Soho, and then there were too many bodies, bodies everywhere and he had to press through them and that too was _wonderful,_ the back of someone's hand rubbing against his knuckles, the toss of a woman's head sweeping long hair across his neck, and before he knew it Sherlock was inching along in his John-Not-John body, seeking the crowds, bumping his hip against her, brushing a hand against him, and by the time Sherlock realised this delicious little invasion was all a bit not good his senses were sizzling, hyper-alert and it was then he noticed that lilting hum, that breathless little sound that was everywhere…it was him.

Sherlock stopped. He breathed deep and wasn't it amazing how that, just that settled him? Was that intrinsic to John? Was John's very biology the miracle that made him capable of being at the centre of a maelstrom yet remain its almost-peaceful heart? Sherlock fisted his fierce, gentle, perfect, _little_ hands against his own chest, took another deep breath, ready to run, only this time he glanced over his shoulder and there, right behind him, the gold-horned god in his armour, looking not like a dream or superhero or stripper, but like a fragile, bright-eyed creature giddy with delight at this joyful mischief he'd made.

Sherlock grinned back, sharp-tugged again at a lock of Loki's long hair, and then he ran and ran again, over through under between, his short legs taking him from road to kerb to pavement to park to one turn and then another and into the dark of another mews and it was there Loki caught him.

Because there's something to be said for long spider-fingers and lengthy-limbs, and Loki maybe cheated a little, using these and his godly grace to wrap himself around Sherlock's John-Not-John body even as they tripped on one another's feet. Their fall felt like flying for an interminable time and then they _oofed_ with quick-expelled breathes onto the rooftop of 221B, rolling across the grey roof slate, laughing until both were breathless.

Outside the dream maybe, just maybe, John Watson shifted away from Sherlock or the pipes rapped as Dr. Harris down in 221C got up for her early shift, for quick as a blink Loki's laughing was silenced, Sherlock's went soft, edges blurred.

And even in the dream Sherlock knew the dream was suddenly falling apart.

*

"Oh fuck."

At this point Sherlock would be disappointed if his feverish little love didn't keep interrupting. Because Sherlock understands really over-committing to a thing and John was dramatically overcommitted. It was a comfort, not being the only drama queen in 221B.

"I'm sorry Sherlock, but _fuck."_

Sherlock's tiny queen tugged a tissue from his nostril and threw it to the floor dramatically. "I know you can't do anything about your subconscious or when this ends and I'm sorry if you feel pressured but—" John swiped messily at a fresh flow of mucus, then nodded his head, as if he'd just made a long and technical point.

With his silence Sherlock made his own point and that point was this: There was more.

John gurgled moistly, accepted a fistful of tissues from Sherlock, and said, "There's more."

"Yes. I…you…we…we're going to come."

Feverish and beatific John mashed a tissue up his nose and snugged in closer.

*

Outside the dream maybe, just maybe, John had gone and snugged closer or Dr. Harris started humming one of those lullabies she's always learning for her pediatric patients, and so Sherlock fell once again into peaceful REM dreaming.

Edges went sharp, the air hummed, and quicker than blinks Loki flipped Sherlock onto his back on strangely-comfortable rooftop slate, crawled on top of him, a sinuous cage of long, blue limbs. He kissed neck and mouth and eyes and whispered, "Look at you beautiful one, your big, lavish body tucked in small. But your love's just a different sort of lavish isn't he, your sweet doctor, fitting so much into so brief a space?"

Loki's red eyes went heavy-lidded, he shifted, and that's when Sherlock noticed the god was again in his thin, body-skimming tunic, slim curves warm under Sherlock's hands. Sherlock's John-Not-John body was bare.

"Beautiful," Loki sighed, the back of his hand running along John's jaw, eyes gone soft with wanting. Because no man is more wanted than one wanted by another. Of course Loki wanted John because Sherlock did.

Loki would not have him.

The greedy god knew this and it had nothing to do with reading thoughts or a consulting beauty's scowl.

Already that tiny bit better than he was before, Loki knew here on this familiar roof, in this defined but infinite space tenanted by the love of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, he had no rights. Of course he could wheedle and trick, he is a man mischievous after all, but taking from someone who trusts you not to take? Well, Loki was losing his taste for that.

So all the pretty god did was kiss a stubbled cheek, look into eyes so blue-dark he could not find their depth, and he put his mouth right to Sherlock's ear and whispered, "Love him. Your prince. Love."

Then Loki went away.

Well, not quite.

He simply stopped what he'd been doing for all the long length of this long and lusty dream: Covering Sherlock in needing shadow; chattering this, that, and the other thing; he stopped touching and begging and instead Loki of Asgard, a prince who would one day be a king, he settled himself away.

Yet not too far away.

While down below cars shooshed through the night and occasionally honked their displeasure, while people on the pavement talked and moved and lived, well up above all that, on the rooftop of 221B Baker Street, where John and Sherlock have spent heavy summer nights sweat-giggle-complaining on a half-deflated lilo, where they've cuddled close after close calls on the old wood benches long since turned almost soft with weather and time, yes up there where their history is sweetly steeped, well there Loki settled, far enough away and yet close enough to hear.

_Love him._

Sherlock sighed in John-Not-John's body. Stretching out on slate that was not-so-very-hard he closed his eyes to the stars above the better to see the things he felt.

What were those things?

The answer was interesting.

What Sherlock felt was the feel of Sherlock's hands, but _not_ the hands themselves _._ Which is to say he was, for all intents and purposes, John Watson, so he felt what John would feel, which was the slide of gentle fingers over flesh. But Sherlock, who was at the heart of the glamour, inside it if you will, his fingertips didn't register the touch because he wasn't Sherlock, not while he touched John. He was John. And so he felt what John would feel.

And that was this: A palm now resting on his belly and shaking with a tremour of nerves and desire, then the smoothing slick of sweat as that big hand traveled from belly to chest to a lazy circling around and then on to a nipple.

Moans in bed those first days they were together had told Sherlock John's nipples were sweetly sensitive but it was a different thing for him to feel _how._ Where for Sherlock a touch to tender buds zinged adrenaline right to his cock, for John the touch was a tightness across his chest, like a breathlessness that needed sating with a deep breath.

Which is the lyrical way of saying a touch to one of John's nipples made the muscles behind them tense and that created the sensuous sensation of _weight_ and oh! Suddenly it was no wonder John loved when Sherlock rested the dense solidity of his body on top of him.

There was much more for a curious man to know, so Sherlock moved on from nipples to neck and here again the sensations were different. Sherlock's response has as much to do with who's doing him—John, always John—as what's being done, for before the good doctor Sherlock was not a fan of the vast expanse that is his neck because _there was too damn much of it._

Sherlock's been so much everywhere too much, body and mind, for so long that he'd long ago piecemealed himself, deciding which bits he liked (his mind) and which he didn't (everything else). So Sherlock learned to look upon everything else with not just indifference but actual distaste.

And then there was John. John who didn't piecemeal, except to say "This, and this, and this part of you? All parts, every one, beautiful, sweet as honey, yours and mine and ours and perfect." Then he proved it by loving every part.

Which is the long way of saying that when John touches Sherlock's nipple, neck, chest, anywhere, Sherlock's response is emotional _and_ physical. Yes, sure, it's that way for John too, but with each touch Sherlock's learning that for John the physical is…well it's gratifying simply of itself.

So Sherlock went ahead and gratified.

He heard himself hum in John's tenor when he tickled John-Not-John's throat. He ran the trembling tips of his finger over the top of John's ear and felt John's skin hive with gooseflesh and that felt so good that by instinct he did something he'd never done before. He stroked round the tender-curving shell, following the warm whorl until one long finger slipped into John's ear.

_"Hnnng!"_

Sherlock yanked his finger out, skin prickling with a flush of blood, cock making itself known with a dramatic bit of leakage, then he did it again. Touch. Whorl. Insert.

_"Hnnng!"_

Oh my.

Now the thing is, Sherlock freaks his shit right on out when John puts a finger in his ear. The three, four, five times John's done it, Sherlock's levitated off the floor, then hit the ground running.

So it had never occurred to Sherlock to put a finger in _John's_ ear.

Well, that was going to change.

After.

Right now Sherlock gently patted John-Not-John's ear, then stroked down John's stubbled jaw, to his shoulder, to—

Wait.

Sherlock's fingers danced back up, to John's bullet scar. This was not an especially fascinating part of John's body to Sherlock, for he knew personally the numbness of wounded flesh, the tingle at its healed edges. What he didn't know until he touched John's wound both front and back was…that's exactly how it felt for John.

By now and for both of them the old injury was just that. Old. Forgotten mostly, noticed rarely, a small part of a much grander whole.

Sherlock moved on.

He ran his palm down along his hip and then grinned himself straight back up to John's nubby belly button. For Sherlock this little knot of protruding flesh is ridiculously fascinating, sensitive and secret both, he loves to smell it suck it nibble it and, like now, slick a spit-wet finger over it until John laughs.

Sherlock laughed, and the sound was John's giggle, high and somehow deep and _that_ right there was the sexiest thing so far so of course Sherlock took hold of John-Not-John's leaking cock and stroked and stroked and Christ it felt so good he kind of banged his head against the slate and lifted his legs until he was flat-footed on the tile, slicking his cock with his own slick.

Without even thinking about it he brought his wet hand to his face pressed against nose and open mouth and _that! That! That!_

Anyone who's seen Sherlock at a crime scene'll tell you he's got a great sniffer, shoving his snoot into creases and cracks, snuffling corpses and clues and proclaiming, "L'Homme," or "Drum Gold rolling tobacco," or once, " Oct-1-en-3-one!" ("He means it smells like blood," John told Lestrade.)

Sherlock's just learned he's got nothing on John when John scents something. Well one thing. A specific thing. A Sherlock thing.

Mouth open cat-like, his own scent taken in through John-Not-John's nose, the salts the sugars the enzymes of his own musk a perfect chemistry arching his back off body-warmed tile, making him moan and drop his legs open in invitation.

John is left-hand dominant, John wanks with his right. Sherlock grunted and spit in his right, then again pressed the scent-heady left over his face, breathed deep, deeper, and he stroked himself the scent glorious and everywhere around him. It was his own but it was John nosing the air and it was John's skin flushing skittering, breath gathering, tension between legs, it felt different not different better the same it was John's senses his mind, or was it John's mind didn't matter didn't after all matter because it was _good_ and that was all that mattered and…

…the dream went soft round the edges…

…the edges sharpened…

…became dozy morning reality and…

…and what had been John's hand became Sherlock's hand became John's hand on Sherlock and together in their rumpled morning bed they touched Sherlock and touched him, and touched him, with fever-warm hands and lips and then a hot mouth and there in that bed in a warm room inside 221B Sherlock Holmes arched his neck, his back, his entire body and he _groaned._

Oh that orgasm was big. Starbursts behind tightly-squinched eyes big. Woozy from blood loss to the brain big. Heart in the throat, goosebumps everywhere, fuck me twice and call the paramedics little death big.

The orgasm was better than good it was back-bowing brilliant. Sherlock's heart stilled, his blood raced, and his bones melted. He stopped breathing for as long as the orgasm went on and while it was only ten, twelve, fourteen seconds at the outside it was lavishly lengthy and so grand that by the time his breath returned he was sweating and possibly half unconscious.

And…

…time passed. A timeless time.

Eventually Sherlock yawned. Opened bright eyes. He turned his head, looked at John.

John spit out Sherlock's thumb, said softly, "Back now?"

Sherlock thought about that. He took a deep, soul-soothing sigh, checked all systems, nodded.

John sighed back. "That was perfect. All of it. Everything."

Sherlock hmmmm contentedly.

After another little while John said, "There's more you know. Movies. Loki movies."

Sherlock had not known that. It was a good thing to know. He now knew it. Something might be done about the knowing. In the future.

Meantime more timeless time catfooted by. While it did, John got all thinky in his thinking place. Fiddling with Sherlock's fingers absent-mindedly he said at last, "There's one bit of the dream I don't get."

Sherlock telegraphed his surprise with a series of blinks. Frankly there were at least eight bits Sherlock didn't get, from the stuff with the pomegranates and the thing with the ashes to the bit about the Shard. Maybe he'd have to ask John about some of those things later, but right now Sherlock rolled to his side, faced his one true love, and waited.

"I don't understand _you."_ To make his point John gently pulled then tugged then yanked the tissue box out of Sherlock's other hand— _how was he still holding it?—_ and mimed with it a grumpy dish-clattering. "After all the dream kisses and cuddles and three actual real orgasms, I mean, Sherlock, why on earth did you wake up so _cranky?"_

Of course John would be okay with giggling gods, existential philosophy, and extended and repeated pornographic goings on, but require explanation for rude behaviour.

"John. When I woke from this dream one hundred years ago, I still had some, what's that pithy term Americans love? Ah yes—baggage. I still had a significant amount of 'baggage' about the rightness of…"

Sherlock casually tried reclaiming the tissue box without realising he was doing so.

"…my own desires."

John instinctively gripped the tissue box tighter. Quickly realising what he was doing, he let go. "And now?"

Sherlock hugged the box with one hand, wiggled the fingers of the other until John began playing with them again.

"Now I think I could happily bugger you in a Fortnum & Mason display window for all the world to see."

Wait.

"No, what I mean is, I could, I could…"

John blinked tender, rheumy eyes at Sherlock, pressed their foreheads together. Sherlock sighed in relief and waited for John's wise-cranky-protective words. He knew John knew how to say what he wanted to say, so Sherlock waited.

And waited.

And—

John sneezed himself awake, already talking. "—we're us Sherlock. We're _we._ Nothing else matters, just you and me and what we think is right for you and me. I don't actually know if the Fortnum & Mason people would _let_ you bugger me in a Christmas display window, but if they did and it made you happy it'd make me happy and you know what? Fuck anyone else who says different. Just fuck 'em."

Sherlock grinned beatific and hummed in agreement. He pushed against John's forehead with his own, trying to press words into John, press laughter and thanks and love. Most of all that. Most of all Sherlock wanted to tell John he loved him, with all the heart that was in him.

To help him do that, Sherlock carefully pushed the tissue box toward John. Accepting the benediction, John took it.

They serenely breathed on one another awhile.

Then Sherlock sneezed. Once. Twice.

John handed him a tissue.

Sherlock took it and blew.

A few long moments later Sherlock carefully reached out—John thought it was for another tissue—and put his finger in John's ear.

_"Hnnng."_

A half hour later dozens of damp wads of tissue were scattered over the night tables, the floor, the bed.

They'd even used some to blow their noses.

Afterward John Watson and Sherlock Holmes slept the rest of the day away. The empty tissue box between them.

_I thought this was done but there's a small closing chapter. I'm very happy about this closing chapter. P.S. I must thank 221b_hound for the words "Love him," as read in[the final chapter of her glorious Star-Crossed](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/11021573) series. I knew how this ended when I read those. _


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me again, my love, about your mortal prince and his bright brain. Tell me of your mortal beauty's tiny, true love."
> 
> Loki Laufeyson looked at Thor Odinson with mischievous scarlet eyes.
> 
> "Why do you want to know?"

Thor Odinson shifted on his belly and blinked drowsy into early morning light.

He sighed himself a smile and shifted again among the bed clothes. He felt sore, delightfully used, and was still so sweetly wet with it.

He wanted that again.

The king of Asgard curled onto his side and gazed on his consort-king. Bare but curled close on their bed, Loki's eyes danced beneath his lids in deep dreaming. Thor watched for awhile, as he always did, suspecting of whom his lover dreamt and pleased with his suspicions.

 _Did you know I love him too_ , _my brother, your long-ago beauty? That sweet, fragile human helped bring you to me at last, aye that he did._

Thor wished to run fingertips over his own beauty's deep-set eyes, but feared it might wake him, so he contented himself with gazing at his dreaming love and perhaps the tender god dozed a little, and dreamt a bit, too. He usually dreams of peaceful things, does Thor, his night reveries so often hazed in colours red and flesh-blue, steeped in laughing sighs and familiar moans. His sleep now was light as rain ash however, for when Loki hmmm'ed in languid wakefulness, Thor woke, watched, then carefully insinuated his arm beneath a lean back. Waiting until Loki grinned, Thor curled that strong arm until his husband was on top of him, heavy-lidded and smiling down.

"You were dreaming that old dream again my love, were you not?" whispered the besotted king. "Dreaming of your long ago Midgardian and his pretty beau."

Body blue and sleep-warm, Loki rubbed belly to belly, then shifted down just a little, until his heavy erection drooped between his brother's open legs. He closed red eyes and undulated slow, his cock poking against then sliding away from the slick seam of Thor's arse.

"Don't be jealous my love," whispered the consort-king, pleased as ever that, though Thor was frankly terrible at reading minds—"Including your own most of the time you fine, hulking ninny"—he was sometimes so very good at knowing Loki's.

Thor knew his own mind _most_ of the time, he would say in mock defense. He proved this truth with another wanting sigh, tilting his hips, thighs clasping, calves wrapping and pulling until they both moaned as Loki sunk in deep.

"Never of you," groaned Thor. "Y-you may bed…who you will my only, my one, my love, so long as you ever come back to me."

Loki Laufeyson grumbled soft and pleasant curses into his brother's mouth, as he ever will, for sometimes he wished Thor was a little more… _possessive_ of this, of them. Yet, though this god is by nature a man mischievous, he's no fool. Another mischievous man five hundred years dead and dust taught him a few things about being content with what you need, and grateful when you get the things you want.

Loki hadn't expected to learn a lesson that centuries-gone night he insinuated himself into Sherlock Holmes' dream. Both restless and lethargic, full of desire and yet fitful in his own skin, Loki had simply sought diversion. Like his brother he'd always had a weak spot for unpredictable humans, so he'd looked for and found such a pretty distraction, a flash-bright blaze of pique and purpose on London's Oxford Street, striding along as if he walked through the halls of a palace.

Enthralled immediately, Loki had glamoured himself plainer than plain and followed Sherlock Holmes, thinking, _You move like a prince sweet beauty but look at you: Soft skinned, pale as a winter sky, fingers slim as tapers…yet delicate as you know yourself to be, you stride and stomp and frown at everything around you! I know what that's like, to stalk through the world as if sheer force of will will move mountains of your own manufacture, to be so small but with the grandest of purpose._

The lure of the rare Midgardian was great and so Loki followed him for all the hours of that long-gone day, glamouring himself over and again so he could toy with this brilliant beauty.

First the god became a girl grinning and giggling as she blinked wide-eyed and asked for directions. Sherlock gave them with a strange sort of curt kindness—"Left, left, left, and you're right there." Then Loki had clutched briefly at Sherlock's arm ten minutes later, wearing that same girl's face only grown sixty years older. He'd watched in delight as Sherlock's gaze narrowed, eyes darting across deep-set wrinkles and grey hair, his brain a bright fretwork of deductive thoughts, then just before Loki suspected discovery he quick-smart murmured something silly and ducked into a shop.

So it went for hour after hour of a London morning and an afternoon.

Loki became a cabbie sipping coffee against the hood of his car, smiling at the tall passerby; he was a doctor in a lift at St. Bart's complaining about the cafeteria's terrible coffee; he let himself almost be discovered by a fit of giggles when he masqueraded as a particularly well-preserved corpse.

He became a mounted police officer in the park, then that officer's head-tossing horse. When Sherlock touched the velvet of his equine nose Loki went giddy with glamours that would let him touch. He became a bee landing on the back of Sherlock's hand, spread-winged and shivering as Sherlock breathed soft words over him. He took soaring flight and at the edge of the Midgardian's perception became a cooing pigeon, then a butterfly, then best of all a bulldog pup bowling Sherlock off his feet when he squatted down to pet, licking Sherlock's sharp-boned face in happy, slightly sexual abandon.

With each glamour Loki was certain he could taste-hear-smell quicksilver awareness just beneath Sherlock's conscious thoughts, a primeval part of that great brain again and again sensing a familiar animal creeping close.

After all that, Loki was quite done for, so that evening he insinuated himself into Sherlock's dream, keen to continue toying with his sweet human. But then, oh then, then, _then…_ this magnificent mortal in no way mere, he turned round in the mist of their shared reverie and Sherlock Holmes began to toy with _him._

What a dream it had been.

The orgasms were sweet as pomegranates have no doubt, yet even sweeter had been a thing far more fine—knowing and being known. In dreams, where a god and a man are equal, a stranger had, strangely, become a friend. And though it would take Loki a long time to truly learn the lessons Sherlock taught him that night, Loki would indeed learn.

Until he did however, Loki Laufeyson would do many foolish things. He'd hurt those he loved and who loved him. His petulance would change the course of cultures, cities, worlds. Yet of all the people he for so many years hurt, it was his own body and soul which suffered most. In those dark times, he'd revisit that night so many years gone and he'd hold close the alikeness, the acceptance he'd found there.

Then bit by bit by year by year Loki stayed Loki where it mattered but he became better where it was needed. Over time he thought of the dream less, needed it less.

Then there was Thor.

There was always Thor.

Thor, who had loved Loki without reservation since they were both babes, who had seen always the bright heart caged inside a maelstrom of emotion and uncertainty— _am I weak? strong? prince? potential king? Asgardian? Frost Giant? what what what?_ Thor knew his one true love was rather like a living Tesseract, potential incalculable but so easy to misuse, most especially by himself.

Revelations can be slow-blooming things and for all his godly grandeur, for all his pomp and certainty of his circumstance, Loki was slow, slower, slowest in realising what he wanted was what he already had: A small and fine dominion. Which is to say he wanted to know and be known and when he realised that, he also realised he already had it, had always had it.

He knew every corner of Thor's mind and heart, he damn well ruled it. And knowing this—despite it? because of it?—Thor wanted, needed, _knew_ him.

Revelation complete.

Nothing had prepared Loki for at last loving his brother as his brother had always loved him. Nothing prepared Loki for want as big as time, desire as vast as the Nine Realms. They have been together a hundred years in mortal measures, these brother-kings, but nearly the blink of an eye for a long-lived god. So Loki Laufeyson? He's still just a bit ravenous for his gentle-sweet giant.

Sometimes that hunger manifests in dreaming dreams of sex right after they've had it. The sweeter the coming in their bed, the more likely Loki is to want more, so more he gets in memory-dreams.

Somehow the dreaming wakes Thor, nearly every time, and the gentlest ruler Asgard has ever known reaches for his one true love and gathers him close. Then, like now, they press and push at each other, they tease and promise, and…and…and…

"Oh…oh sweet prince, my king, my love—" Thor's back arched high as he came over his belly and Loki's hand, scoring his brother's back fierce with his nails because that is what Loki so often begs. Feeling the delicious prick of blood and pain, Loki came too, filling Thor again in a place he'd already filled, until the perfect sticky mess of them was everywhere.

…and…and…and then, when they'd settled, curled toward one another and warm, hands on one another's hearts, Thor rumbled, "Tell me again, my love, about your mortal prince and his bright brain."

In their own very personal mythology, these gods of myth had long since agreed that Sherlock Holmes was of course a stand in for Loki Laufeyson. The casting had been near-flawless: A feverish beauty who drew the eye of mortal and god, a reedy strength inside a seemingly-delicate frame, petulance and need and want and _demand_ as big as a world of suns, and so much damned _shouting_ about it that for the longest time both man and god had misunderstood exactly where and _who_ their obstacles were.

"Tell me of your mortal beauty's tiny, true love."

Of course in this mythology, Thor Odinson was played by John Watson. Here the casting had veered from type and yet not really so very much, for that long ago doctor, he had been in his own way the biggest of men, his loyalty and love larger than the frame in which it was housed, his faith in his dearheart, his fury to protect him even when from himself…oh yes that small man's love had been as big as thunder.

"Tell me the pleasures he gave you and the things he taught you so long ago."

Loki Laufeyson, a god not-quite-immortal, finally and at last content in his own rare skin, looked at Thor Odinson with mischievous scarlet eyes. "Why do you want to know my king?"

Though there was a limit to their love making (even gods must rest between times), there was no such limit to how much they could _talk_ about it. So Loki teased and Thor let himself be teased, sometimes even teasing back as far as his serious nature let him, and so it went until they were rested and ready again.

"Because I watch you dream of those long ago men and I wonder what time has embellished in that beautiful head of yours. Is your earthly prince taller, wiser, prettier still? Is the king of his own heart fiercer, gentler, more piquant-sweet?"

Thor shifted restless, moaned thunder-low, a sound so deep Loki felt it in flesh and bone and cock.

"I want to know…because I wonder what new memories you may have unearthed since the last time you dreamt those dreams, my beautiful mate. How sweet-tasting was his white skin, can you say? Did his love sigh with their pleasures or did he moan dark? Tell me the tale again so I can watch your body blush and your cock grow thick. And while you do…"

Thor turned away from his brother just a little, so he could run a big hand from broad chest to belly. Then Thor spread his legs and down low between them his hand went. A moment later he groaned his pleasure and sighed, "…I will keep my body ready for you."

If it's a weakness to relish power over the strong then Loki is one of the weakest creatures he knows. Fortunately the strongest one he knows happily gets on his metaphorical—and literal—knees before him and gives him that power again and again.

Loki pressed his forehead against Thor's shoulder, draped over him a long blue arm, a long blue leg, and said, "W-we were at a fine London restaurant. I should have taken you there all those years ago. You'd have been the most beautiful blonde bull amidst all its glass fuss and finery."

Loki weaved long fingers in Thor's blonde finery, kissed softly a kingly throat.

"The pretty little godling wore a second skin of black linen and blue, my love. And I didn't know it yet, but that sweet prince, well he wanted to seduce me…"

_~ End_

_Thank you for enjoying the boys' wee dream tale. Thank you also to[Verity Burns](http://archiveofourown.org/users/verityburns/pseuds/verityburns) for the inspiration for this story, and [BlackMorgan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackMorgan/pseuds/BlackMorgan) for sexy-lovely prompts as I wrote it. You both made this even more of a joy!_


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